Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

This took way longer to review than I expected, and I'm probably more disappointed than anyone.   I needed something even simpler to read when I was in pain from the weeklong food poisoning, and then I had a migraine where everything was bothering me yesterday, so I wasn't up to reading paper books or anything with a backlight so it was Harry Dresden on Nook.   I'm so glad I was feeling up to finish this book today, because it was amazing!

So, I'm not good with children and exact ages - especially as I was a very precocious child, often reading above my level both in reading level and maturity level.   Having said that?   This is good for younger children, and Tesla claims she's going into the seventh grade as she's offended by the accusation that she's a fifth-grader.  In the back of the book, it says one of the co-authors - Bob Pflugfelder - is an elementally school science teacher and it shows.   It's clear in the way that everything about this book is geared towards that age range.   The main characters, and their friends, are elementary school age, the mystery is just that - mysterious - without being truly scary for an elementary school child, and the science is both easy enough for those children to understand and make the glove featured in this book while also being something of interest to this age range.   

Nick and Tesla's parents are gone, at least for the moment.   They were supposedly soy farmers, but are in fact scientists who had been doing work for the government.  Uncle Newt and his somewhat girlfriend Hiroko have taken in the siblings, however.   As this is the fourth book in this series, it's nice to see that the background isn't skimmed over, although it's not drawn out either; the authors have a nice balance where you get a feel for the characters and their backgrounds without any tedious info-dumping.    It really helps that the interaction between Nick, Tesla, and Newt are relied upon to give you a good feeling for the family dynamics.   

Newt and Hiroko have been hired to fix a science museum's Hallway of Scientists - animatronic versions of the heavy hitters in scientific history - after the last hire had been fired.   They've come in again last minute, as there have been more problems the day before the grand re-opening.   As things continue to go haywire, perpetually paranoid Tesla sees sabotage.   And thus a glove comes into play, a glove that will be modified to catch the saboteurs.   The story is built around the glove, and the glove in turn is built around the story; they meld seamlessly in the end, which only adds to the charm of the story.   

As their search progresses, and the mystery builds, adding red herrings and new potential criminals, the glove gets more and more gadgets.   The gadgets and how-to pages fit right after the chapter where the children decide they need a new gadget, and right before the chapter where they go off to use the new toy they've built.   The instructions are easy to read and understand, and in the beginning there's a disclaimer to ask parents before trying this and a warning that any children trying this at home will probably need parental supervision and help.   (I was hoping to build a gadget glove, but seen as I recently failed to build a tiny Kre-O toy, I'm not sure I can!)  

Highly suggested, especially for a child who may be reluctant to study science.   If I'd had these as a child, I'd have been far more interested myself!   

*I received this ARC from Quirk books, with no promise of a positive review.   Thank you!

**I did take another book out of the library and then failed to read Nick and Tesla's adventure about rampaging robots before this book.   I did compare the illustrations in the how to build gadgets pages, because the ARC ones were blank.  (I only bring this up because in these types of books I try to mention how useful the illustrations were.)   The robot storyline has very clear, hand drawn illustrations.   Given the care that was taken with this ARC - it was a very clean copy - and the care that seems to have been taken with the previous book, I would assume there will eventually be similar, just as helpful illustrations.  I obviously cannot guarantee anything of the sort, however.