Steven Weinberg (2)

This is one of those books that left me cold but which might be a hit with kids. Maybe. I'm not sure.

The story begins with four creatures - AlphaWolf, SmartHawk, LaserShark, and StinkBug - being shot into space in the Thomas Jefferson nose rocket (from Mount Rushmore) which is also the secret NNASA headquarters.

Confused? Luckily Planet Earth is here to explain. According to Earth, in 1988 a top-secret, emergency mission was put in place with four superpowered animal astronauts, just in case humans ever catastrophically destroyed Earth. Which they have done. So the animals are off to find another planet habitable by humans.

The AstroNuts, guided by a somewhat glitchy 1988 computer, Command Escape, are off on their mission to find the Goldilocks Planet without destroying any existing life. Their first mission happens on Planet Plant, which, as you might guess from the name, is inhabited entirely by plants. Their adventures and escapades are interspersed with explanations of climate change by Planet Earth, science facts about plants, and why it's bad for a planet to have one life form that overpowers all other life forms. There's also lots of explosions, shooting lasers, eating exciting salads, and fart jokes.

The art is collages made from art from the Rijksmuseum, cut, pasted, and colored. There's two pages of back matter explaining how to collage and create art with free from this and other museums. The pages are busy with villainous plants, colored engravings, equations, collage creatures with sketched-in eyes and appendages, cut-out words, and speech bubbles.

I found this book to be... kind of a mess. There are multiple things going on, lots of yelling, explosions, chunks of collage everywhere, and it mostly just gave me a headache. I also thought there were some significant issues with the premise - why are they looking for another planet to ruin? How are they defining "intelligent" life? The plants are shown as the "bad guys" but the AstroNuts were destroying them and their home. I thought there were some gender stereotypes in there too. AlphaWolf is portrayed as a stupid jock, but he's still the "leader" while LaserShark is overly sweet, naive, and of course she is charge of housekeeping and feeding everyone.

On the other hand, there's definitely a lot of humor kids will enjoy in this and I can certainly see Bad Guys fans picking it up. But will they keep reading? It's much more challenging than a beginning chapter book, considering all the science that's included, and the very busy pages. I think I'd consider this a lower middle grade title, probably just right for fluent 2nd grade readers up to struggling 5th grade readers.

Verdict: I'm just not sure about this one. It's got universally positive reviews, but I feel like that might be a combination of the currency of the topic and the cachet of the Scieszka name. But I could be wrong! This could be extremely popular! I will have to test it on kids in book club to be sure. To be continued...

ISBN: 9781452171197; Published September 2019 by Chronicle; Borrowed from another library in my consortium… (more)