A Rover's Story

Warga, Jasmine. A Rover's Story

October 4th 2022 by Balzer & Bray/Harperteen

ARC provided by Follett First Look

Sophie's mother Raina works long hours in a lab that is designing and programming Mars rovers. There are two in production, Resilience and Journey. When Resilience comes online, we see how he "learns" things about the world around him, but also witness his emotions about the people and experiences that make up his world. Sophie is very interested in the rover, and when she is sad or anxious, writes letters to him. In parallel, we see Raina's notes to the rover, which talk about her progress through school, her mother's illness, and her good wishes for Res' success. Other characters include Xander, the other scientist who is involved in the design, Fly, a drone that goes to Mars with Res, and Journey, the other Rover whose eventual fate is not as happy as Res'. We follow Res for many years and see the development of the systems, the launch to and landing on Mars, the mission on that planet, and the attempts to bring the unit home when the mission is done. The Rover's progress mirrors Nasa's Opportunity, which "died" on Mars and has not been retrieved, and it's interesting to follow Sophie from elementary school into her thirties. 

Strengths: There are lots of good detailes about what goes in to designing, building, and prorgamming a robotic piece of equipment to send in to space. Most of the chapters are from Res' perspective, but the humans provide a good scaffolding to show the passage of time and the challenges that frail human bodies present. Warga must have done an enormous amount of research to get so many details about what it was like for Res and Fly to have missions on Mars. Sophie and Res certainly have very different voices, and the writing is very smooth, so that the story moves quickly. 

Weaknesses: This is a sentimental tale that evolved from one of Warga's children asking if a would be scared when it went into space. I'm not at all sentimental, and also don't assign emotions to inanimate objects, so I personally couldn't get emotionally invested in this. I'm in the minority; apparently a LOT of people were upset when the Opportunity powered down. For me, that's akin to mourning the microwave, but I can see a lot of people really enjoying this. 

What I really think: Science teachers are always looking for fiction to pair with their curriculum, and this would be a great book, especially since Ohio's 7th grade science curriulum covers Earth and Space. This book would make a great choice for comparing and contrasting against Pixar's WALL-E or Johnson's The Wild Robot. 

 

Middle Grade Monday

What exactly IS middle grade? Both of these books are, even though the represent the extremes. Squish is suitable for 8-11 year olds, although older students might be amused or seek it out as comfort reading, and Rush for the Gold is fine for any readers who can read well enough and have an interest in Olympic swimming, although would be most suitable for ages 12 and up. There is that one big kiss, and any one under the age of 12 would probably go "Ewwwww!" For more middle grade titles, head over to Shannon Whitney Messenger's Ramblings of a Wannabe Scribe to see a list of bloggers with middle grade reviews.

Feinstein, John. Rush for the Gold.

Random House, 22 May 2012
Reviewed for Young Adult Books Central. 

Susan Carol and Stevie are back, and this time Susan Carol is very close to making the Olympic team. She is approached by all sorts of agents and sponsors because she is not only a fantastic swimmer; she is also pretty. Her father is bowing to the pressure for her to wear logos at every interview, which confuses and angers her. Stevie, writing for the Washington newspaper, manages to go to the Olympic trials to be with her (their long distance romance seems to be working better than most), and when she makes the Olympic team, he goes to London as well. While in London, the politics and agent anxiety increase-- Stevie is yelled at for talking to Susan Carol and not getting proper permission to speak to other swimmers. He has to struggle with balancing his reporting with wanting to be with his girlfriend all the time. Susan Carol has to struggle with an increasingly overbearing father who wants her to fire her long time coach because he isn't "big time" enough, and with the pressure to win a gold--so that she can earn the big bucks in sponsorships. When it is clear that another girl, Elizabeth, is a better swimmer but not as pretty and personable as Susan Carol, Susan Carol becomes angry that looks count for so much. Is someone sabotaging Elizabeth because she isn't as attractive? Stevie and Susan Carol are able to use their well-honed investigative skills to figure this out.

Strengths: Even though this book is about a girl, the guys will still pick it up. I was oddly intrigued by all the swimming descriptions as well as the machinations of the agents. Feinstein's background as a sports news writer is always apparent, and that's a good thing when trying to hook reluctant readers. I also liked Susan Carol's ambivalence about her newfound fame.

Weaknesses: While the inclusion of actual athletes as characters will add immediacy to the story now, it will also cause it to date, like Zan Hagen's Marathon. Also, because I am not at all familiar with swimming personalities, I wasn't sure which characters were based on real people and which were purely fictional.

Holm, Jennifer L. and Matthew. The Power of the Parasite.

While Pod and Peggy are off at ballet camp, Squish is stuck at summer swim camp. He doesn't want anything to do with the water after a previous terrible experience, but the conselour is annoyingly perky and keeps encouraging everyone to have "super awesome fun". Luckily, he meets a friend who also doesn't want to swim, Basil, and the two try to avoid swimming and read comic books instead. Squish is also reading about his favorite comic superhero who has taken on a sidekick who has some evil tendencies... just like Basil has a bad habit of using his stingers to inflict pain on unwary suspects. Can Squish survive swim camp? And will Pod manage to open a black hole... with a pirouette?

Strengths: *Snerk* When I took swimming lessons with my brother in 1974, he spent every lesson hiding out in the bathrooms because they were WAY warmer than the northeastern Ohio lake! Squish is a bit anxious (like Mason Dixon), but I find his defensiveness about his fear much more believable that elementary grade neuroses!

Weaknesses: Squish, as well as Dragonbreath, are a bit too young for middle school. They are funny enough, but the small size of the books and the aggressive cartoonishness make the students (even those who want nothing but notebook novels) not want to pick them up. Very sad.

Nonfiction Monday

Nonfiction Monday was started by Anastasia Suen and is hosted this week at Rasco from RIF.

Feel I should apologize for complete lack of mojo last week. Since then, our levy has passed, my mother is out of the hospital, and my cold is gone, so I'll try to be a bit more interesting with reviews!


Mecozzi, Maureen. The Uncanny CanThis short (34 pages) book told me everything I could want to know about the "tin" can, including the history of preservation, the reasons that food needed to be preserved and carried about, the types of metals that go into cans and the science behind that engineering, crops grown specifially for canning, advertising for canned food, and even a bit about recycling. This is well illustrated with plenty of terms explained, glossary, index, places to go for additional information etc. While paying $18 for such a short book rather hurts, this was an appealing selection for students.

Next year, the language arts curriculum will start its slow slide away from fiction and toward the Common Core, which will be heavy on nonfiction reading skills. Since many, many students wrinkle their nose at the thought of nonfiction, it will be very important to find high interest, intriguing books that support the curriculum. This would be one of those books, and even includes science!

One thing that is very confusing about the Common Core is the Lexile Level. Even though Lexile.com seems to indicate that lexile levels should not be tied to grades (instead, students should be tested, given a level at which they are reading, and books should be chosen at levels that will build their skills), the Common Core explanations I have seen DO tie lexile levels to grades. Specifically, grades 6-8 are assigned 955-1155. Of course, I found this out AFTER I placed a nonfiction book order. It is of note that ATOS levels differ somewhat from lexile levels, so a book that has an ATOS of 6.9 might come in at an elementary level on lexile. Whew.

I'm still happy with the nonfiction books that I ordered. Some of the books listed as exemplars in the Common Core make me want to hurt myself. Longfellow's Paul Revere's Ride? Little Women? The Adventures of Tom Sawyer? Riveting for middle school students. Students gain different skills from reading nonfiction than they do from reading fiction. The key here, however, is that they have to READ it. The ones below (which thankfully come in at about 1220) are ones that students will definitely pick up.

This series is reminiscent of the Rosen series with Marijuana and Your Lungs: The Incredibly Disgusting Story (2000). I liked how each book gave a history of the food discussed, talked about why the ingredients are added to the foods to make them more appealing, gave the different health hazards that the different types of food additives pose, and then describe what healthier alternatives would be. While all four books are fairly alarmist, they have good reason to be. Understandably, the Mystery Meat book is a bit preachier than the others, and the pictures of tapeworms will probably turn a lot of children into vegetarians!

I appreciated that while there are plentiful illustrations and sidebars, the pages are filled mostly with connected text. There is a glossary at the end of each book (although highlighting words on the pages might have helped a bit), a bibliography, and a list of helpful organizations. At 36 pages, this is just the right length to have a student read during study hall, although it hurts to pay $18.00 for a Follett Bound Sewn copy.