I won another giveaway :D

I'd totally forgotten I'd entered this, too!   Sometimes I enter just to get it out to my friends, and this was the case with this.   I loved the other book I won in this series, so I'm psyched to get this one, too, but I was hoping it was a way to get the word out, as I tend to notice the giveaways my friends enter.  

So, I was surprised, but quite pleased, to get the notice about this.   I still think I need to buy Robot Army Rampage, and maybe this will be the thing that gets my booty in gear to do just that. 

I don't think we've ever had a BookLikes giveaway month this epic before. Seriously. So many books. Too many books? Possibly. 

Here's what you can enter to win on BookLikes this month. 

* Hollow City by Ransom Riggs (Until February 15th!)

* The Fangirl's Guide to the Galaxy by Sam Maggs

* Summer Cocktails by Maria del mar Sacasa

* Find Momo Coast to Coast by Andrew Knapp

* Manhattan Mayhem (Sampler) by Mary Higgins Clark

* Nick & Tesla's Special Effects Spectacular by Steve Hockensmith & Science Bob

Go forth, and good luck! 

I actually only picked up this book for work because its a Battle of the Books book this year. Very cute and surprisingly fun read.

Nick and Telsa are brother and sister forced to spend the summer with their crazy uncle. When their rocket gets launched into the yard of the large abandoned house down the street a mystery and adventure like no other begins to enfold.

This actually reminds me a lot of The Sandlot. A group of kids trying to get into the yard of a neighbor house. To do so they create some crazy science experiments. I love The Sandlot and I think that's partly why I really enjoyed this one.

There are science experiments within the book so kids can try them out at home. My one complaint would be that all of them seemed rather top notch and required several materials that not everyone may have. If they were simpler I'd suggest this as perfect book to match Science and Reading classes together.

A fun, laugh out loud, mystery adventure book written perfectly for elementary school boys. Leaving you wondering where the next book is going to go.

Nick and Tesla are twins, named after a famous scientist in Holt family tradition.  They are spending the day, along with their friends Silas and DeMarco, at a local museum where their Uncle Newt(on) has been hired to fix an animatronic exhibit  - of famous scientists, of course.  But things keep going wrong.  Tesla soon figures out that someone is sabotaging the exhibit, and the four 11 year olds are off and running, determined to figure out who is trying to ruin the learnasium’s grand reopening.

Nick and Tesla, budding inventors in their own right, are smart and confident characters.  Silas and DeMarco are supportive, helpful friends and provide much of the comic element of the story.  DeMarco gets words mixed up and Silas is convinced that the malfunctioning animatronics are a sign of an impending robo-geddon. 

Each of these characters has an important role in solving the mystery, with Uncle Newt and other adults helping when needed. 

My take:

I won a copy of Nick and Tesla’s Super-Cyborg Gadget Glove on booklikes and received it in July, but knew that I would be staying with my sister and her family in September, so I saved reading it until I was with my middle-school aged niece and nephew.  Well, both claimed that they were too old for the book, but my 11 year old niece (M.C.) was happy to do a read-aloud with me as long as she was involved in the review process.  So, we started taking turns reading chapters to each other.  Not long into it, we were both laughing and M.C. was asking if it was part of a series.  She was happy to see that it was.  My 12 year old nephew refused to sit with us, but just happened to wander into whichever room we were in… repeatedly.

There are words that will challenge a young reader, and which challenged my niece when she was reading aloud.  This was great practice for her, and she was able to master a few new words.  Having an accent thrown in when reading the recorded voice for an animatronic scientist made reading aloud even more fun.

We decided not to actually build the gadget glove, but enjoyed looking at the instructions and drawings to figure out how it would work.  The glove is built one finger at a time, each placed right after the chapter in which that finger is made in the story.

One of the things that I appreciated in this book was the cooperative and supportive relationship between Nick, Tesla, their friends, their Uncle and his “kind-a sort-a girlfriend” Hiroko.  I also appreciated the way the four 11 year olds were respectful of adults, something I didn’t always find when working with actual 11 year olds. 

A strong point of the writing is the ending of chapters.  Every time I would try to stop reading at the end of a chapter, M.C. would say, “That’s a horrible place to stop.”  And then I would agree to read “just a little bit more…”

This book is a fun and mystery filled romp through a museum, or “learnasium,” that will leave young readers wanting more. 

M.C.’s Take:

By the end of each chapter, you want to keep reading more.  There are some confusing words, such as askew, akimbo, Renaissance, learnasium, animatronics, and more. It is an awesome book, and I would love if they made it into a movie.

A fun book with a mystery and instructions on how to build your own gadget glove. I really enjoyed this book, my 11 year old niece took turns reading aloud and at one point said "they should make this a movie." Full review soon, with input from my niece.

I received a free copy of this book from Quirk Books via a booklikes giveaway. All opinions are my own, except those of the contributing 11 year old who initially said this book was too young for her, but then wanted to know if there were more Nick and Tesla books...