By Jon Scieszka
A child inventor tries to build a robot, fails, and gets two that build themselves instead.
Frank Einstein is a young inventor with a garage lab and a science-fair deadline. He is trying to build an artificial intelligence. It does not work. Then lightning hits the lab, and two robots assemble themselves out of the junk on the bench: Klink, a tidy self-assembled intelligence made largely from a coffee can, and Klank, a huge clanking almost-intelligence who is enthusiastic about everything and correct about very little. Together they go after an antimatter motor, and so does Frank's rival T. Edison, who has a chimpanzee for a henchman and no intention of losing.
This is where a robot obsession meets an actual science book without your child noticing. Jon Scieszka wrote it funny first, and Brian Biggs drew real labeled diagrams all the way through, so a child gets matter and antimatter and how a motor works while they think they're reading a comedy. Klink and Klank are the draw. They're proper robots with proper robot logic, and their arguments are the funniest thing in the book. The chapters are short, there's a picture every couple of pages, and it's a series, so a child who lands here has four more waiting. Good for a strong reader who wants to laugh and a wobbly one who needs the pictures.