Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

I'd forgotten that this says, in very small print, that it's about the Bayverse as well when I ordered this from the library.   I'll be returning it tomorrow.   The art is okay, for the most part, and I understand why the stories had to be simplified for smaller children.   (It's not just making sure that the violence is too traumatic, either; it's really about word choices, and making sure that beginning readers can, in fact, read these stories.)

But, especially for beginning readers, there are some really weird turn of phrases and sentences.   And what is this teaching young readers?   That this kind of grammar is acceptable.   It is not.   I feel that something so slim, something aimed at either reluctant readers, or even those children who are eager to start reading, should be better than this.   It's not just about my own outrage at a less than two hundred page book that is mostly illustrations is so faulty.   It's about what we're teaching kids.  

Just one example:

"Bumblebee turns into a supersonic bad-guy blaster."

I had to laugh.   This sounds like something written in Japanese and that babel fish translated - very badly.   No, he doesn't turn into a blaster.   That implies he, all of him, turns into a gun.   He has weapons, yes, but they're loaded on him.   

Not only that, how exactly is he supersonic?   And that's so much easier for a young kid to understand than fast?   

A lot of my other examples were implications, and false facts: they get a lot wrong about the movies.   Jetfire wasn't portrayed as old and powerful and wise, so much as bumbling and old and having just enough power left to do what needed to be done. 

Not very impressed.   I won't be spending money on this book, or on the I Can Read series of Transformers books, now or in the future.