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Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin

Mar18

The Danny Dunn books were a series of 15 science fiction adventure books, published in the late 1950’s and into the 60’s, about Danny, who’s a red-headed, adventurous, all-American boy who loves mathematics and science. Danny lives with his widowed mother, the live-in housekeeper for Professor Euclid Bullfinch, a researcher and inventor who works for Midston University. In Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine, Danny is flanked by his two friends Irene and Joe as the trio experiment with getting Professor Bullfinch’s new mini-computer, Miniac aka Minny, to do their homework for them.

As dated as the science is in this book, I think this particular Danny Dunn adventure has a lot to say about present day technology and our relationship to it. Professor Bullfinch, in the story, has invented a computer that is much smaller and faster and more powerful than the actual computers (IBM) available in 1958. However, when Irene says to the professor that Miniac is “a kind of Superman”, the professor disagrees.

The Professor shook his head. “No, my dear,” he said. “It is only a kind of supertool. Everything in this machine is inside the human head, in the much smaller space of the human brain. Just think of it–all the hundreds of thousands of switches, core memory planes, miles of wires, tubes–all that’s in that big case and in this console–are all huge an awkward compared to the delicate tiny cells of the human brain which is capable of doing as much as, or more than, the best of these machines. It’s the human brain which can produce a mechanical brain like this one.”

“The computer can reason,” he went on. “It can do sums and give information and draw logical conclusions, but it can’t create anything. It could give you all the words that rhyme with moon, for instance, but it couldn’t put them together into a poem. . . . It’s a wonderful, complex tool, but it has no mind. It doesn’t know it exists.”

Professor Bullfinch goes away to a conference and leaves Danny in charge of Miniac. That’s when Danny and his two friends impulsively decide that it would be a great idea to program Miniac to do their homework for them. They don’t think of it as cheating, just using a tool like a pencil or a typewriter, but better, to help them do their homework more effectively. Complications ensue.

So many ideas are embedded in this simple story, so many questions to discuss. Are computers just a learning tool? is it fair for some students to have access to a computer while others do not? What about AI (artificial intelligence)? AI can write poems and produce art and author stories and more. Is AI just another tool? Does ChatGPT “know it exists”? Will AI applications become self-aware in the future?

Some people, called trans-humanists believe that AI and humans will someday soon be able to emerge, creating trans-humans with super intelligence and abilities. Although discussion of this particular fallacy (and I do believe it’s a false and potentially evil goal) would not be appropriate for most of the students who would be reading Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine, elementary school students should be introduced to the issues and questions surrounding the use of computers and AI. I don’t a better way to introduce these topics than a quick read of Danny Dunn—and much discussion.

This book is the first Danny Dunn story I remember reading. I was aware of these books as a child, but I wasn’t too interested in science at the time, so they didn’t really appeal to me. The science in these books was said to have been up to date and based on a solid science foundation at the time. The authors consulted with IBM and toured their facility while writing Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine.

Content considerations: The book has some 1950’s language and behaviors that have become somewhat unacceptable in our “enlightened times.” Joe and Irene get into an argument when Joe blames Irene and women in general for some trouble that kids are having. Irene pushes Eddie “Snitcher” Phillips into a mud puddle in retaliation for his tattling on them and their homework machine. And it is implied that Irene has a mild crush on Danny, or vice-versa. The children are in eighth grade in this particular story.

The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly

Feb24

Kelly, Erin Entrada. The First State of Being. Greenwillow Books, 2024.

Newbery Medal winner for 2024 and National Book Award finalist. Erin Entrada Kelly’s science fiction story, set in the final days of the twentieth century (1999), tells about Michael, who’s worried about the future, meeting with Ridge, who comes from the future (2199) via time travel. Theories of how time travel works and what consequences it might have swirl and intersect, enough to make the reader’s swim. But time travel itself isn’t the focus of the novel. Instead it’s a book about learning to live in the present rather than being anxious about the future or trying to change the past.

“Michael smiled and joined her on the couch. ‘How was work?’ he asked.

She smelled like the restaurant, but Michael didn’t mind. If his mother was home, he was happy, even if she smelled like chimichangas.

‘I took every breath,’ she said. It was what she always said. I took every breath. In other words: if she was still here, still breathing, it was a good day, and she was thankful for it.”

The love and wisdom embodied in that quote from the beginning of the book are the best parts of the story. Thirteen year old Michael and his mother have a close and loving relationship. They take care of one another. Michael is a good kid, somewhat anxious and over-concerned about the future, Y2K in particular. His only friends at the beginning of the story are his sixteen year old babysitter, Gibby, on whom he has an innocent crush, and his apartment building janitor and handyman, Mr. Mosely, a kind old soul who takes a special interest in Michael.

I wanted to like Michael, and I did. I even forgave him for stealing canned goods from the local supermarket to add to his Y2K stash in the opening scenes of the novel. Michael is just trying to take care of himself and his mother–in case Y2K really is the disaster that many are predicting. But I wanted him to realize by the end of the novel that theft is wrong, no matter how good your intentions are. And he doesn’t, really. He decides that he has become a thief, and that he is much too anxious about a future he can’t control, but his “repentance” takes the form of surrepticiously donating his stash to the local food bank.

I don’t want to be picky, but this scenario of repentance without confession and restitution reinforces the common and fallacious idea that stealing from a store or large business isn’t really like stealing from a person. The store will be O.K. They won’t miss whatever you took. Michael feels guilty because he hasn’t been the best person he can be, not because he’s taken something that belongs to someone else. I want someone in this story to tell him that he owes the owner of the grocery store an apology and restitution.

Ridge, the boy from the future, has made a mistake, too, and although he regrets his action of using his mother’s untested “time machine”, he never really experiences guilt or asks for forgiveness. Maybe it’s all a part of the theme of living in the present and not worrying about the future or spending time time regretting past actions.

Anyway, it’s a good story with fun cultural references to the late twentieth century (Red Hot Chili Peppers, hanging out at the mall, KB Toys, etc.), but the ethics are somewhat mixed. I like the idea of living in the present and not worrying about the future, but stealing is an offense against an individual and needs to be resolved by repentance and restitution to the wronged party, if possible. If you read this one with a child, these are topics ripe for discussion.

The Superteacher Project by Gordon Korman

Jul17

What makes a good teacher? A great middle school teacher? A super-teacher? Well, a teacher should first of all know the subject matter that he’s teaching. Mr. Aidact, the new teacher at Brightling Middle School, has that covered. In fact, Mr. Aidact seems to know just about everything. His encyclopedic knowledge of algebra American history, French, song lyrics, trivia, and even field hockey (which he is assigned to coach) is amazing.

But to be a Superteacher requires more than knowledge. A teacher has to have the ability to impart that knowledge to students and to inspire or engage those students in learning for themselves. The jury is still out as to whether Mr. Aidact is capable of being that kind of teacher—and whether or not he can keep up with Oliver and Nathan, the resident pranksters at Brightling Middle School. And when Oliver becomes convinced that there is something fishy about Mr. Aidact, he’s determined to find out just who—or what–this new Superteacher really is.

The Superteacher Project is science fiction about the near-future and is therefore very up-to-date, dealing with current events, and that is both a positive and a negative. It’s probably going to be about as popular in the short term as Mr. Aidact because it deals with something that is the topic of the day, artificial intelligence. But it will just as quickly become dated as events progress. The characters in the books make references to Elon Musk, Motor Trend, and Jeopardy!, among other pop culture allusions. How long will those be known and understood cultural touchstones?

Nevertheless, it was a humorous and light-hearted read, with some thoughtful moments. I recommend it for the sake of entertainment and maybe as a way to open a conversation about AI and the implications it has for the future.

The Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher

Jan10
  • The White Mountains by John Christopher, 1967.
  • The City of Gold and Lead by John Christopher, 1967.
  • The Pool of Fire by John Christopher, 1968.
  • There was also a prequel, When the Tripods Came, published in 1988.

John Christopher is a pseudonym for British author Sam Youd, who wrote a multitude of novels and short stories for both adults and children, mostly speculative fiction, although he says in this 2009 interview that he “outgrew science fiction” before he became successful at writing it.

Christopher/Youd’s most famous books are these three, written for children and young adults, about a post-apocalyptic society in Europe in which a species from another planet, called the Tripods and the Masters, have subjugated the entire Earth and almost all its inhabitants. A small group of people in the mountains of Switzerland have managed to remain free and form a resistance group. And in the White Mountains our narrator and hero, Will Parker, is determined to join the resistors before he is “capped” and made a slave to the Tripods on his fourteenth birthday.

Boys Life, the monthly magazine of the Boy Scouts of America, serialised all three books in the trilogy from May 1981 to August 1986. The BBC started making a TV series based on the books, but it only lasted through the first two before it was cancelled. The books are well known in sci-fi circles, but they have fallen out of fashion in our dystopian, high fantasy influenced, somewhat violence-laden twenty-first century science fiction reading tastes.

These books are not so much dystopian as they are post-apocalyptic. Nobody mistakenly thinks they have created the ideal world only to find out they are sadly mistaken. The people of Earth have been tricked into believing that this world is all there is, that slavery to the Tripods is inevitable and probably for the best. At least there is no war because the Tripods won’t allow it. But even in the beginning of the first book, The White Mountains, there are hints that the ancestors of these people had technology and comforts that would be useful and life-enhancing. And to all but those whose minds are capped and controlled by the Tripods, it should be obvious that the coming of the Tripods was an apocalyptic event, an invasion that made the world a worse place to live, not better.

These books definitely reminded me of the sixties with themes of the unity of all mankind, the power of technology, mind control, meeting with and understanding (or misunderstanding) alien species, and freedom fighters. I thought of Star Trek with its similar concerns and themes. Although the story holds up well, the ending of the last book is a little sad and wistful in its recognition of human dissension and and its rather forlorn hope for a future of of love, peace, and unity. Again, very sixties and “all we need is love” and “give peace a chance.”

Anyone interested in vintage science fiction and apocalyptic fiction, alien invasions, and the history of the genre, would definitely enjoy this trilogy. I probably read these books for the first time about fifty years ago, and I remembered my enjoyment of them, if not particular plot points. This time around reading Mr. Christopher’s stories was a good way to start out my reading year.

Hana Hsu and the Ghost Crab Nation by Sylvia Liu

Jul18

Hana Hsu can’t wait to be meshed: her brain tied into the multiweb by means of a neural implant that will enable her to communicate with everyone, thought to thought, brain to brain. AND she will be able to choose one of three areas of giftedness to be enhanced: intelligence, sensory powers, or physical strength. However, there are, of course, problems. Hana can’t get meshed for another year, not until she’s thirteen. And Hana feels she is losing touch with the rest of her family, especially her older sister and her Ma, both of whom are already meshed. Then, there’s Hana’s grandmother, Popo, who’s beginning to lose her memory. The only way Hana can see to help Popo and regain her family’s closeness and bond is to get meshed as soon as possible.

Enter the Ghost Crab Nation, a loosely organized group of underground protestors who are trying to, well, Hana’s not sure what their aims are or whether or not she can trust Ink, the girl she met in the junkyard, or Wayman, the old man who wants her to spy on her Start-Up program to see if something nefarious and dangerous is going on. But the Start-Up program is Hana’s way to get herself meshed early, maybe if she does well in as little as three months at the end of the summer. Should Hana trust the leaders of her Start-Up? Should she trust Wayman and Ink? Is there a downside to getting meshed? The entire book is a mystery inside a science fiction dystopian fantasy, and the world building is well done.

Other pluses:

  • Hana is a great character, concerned for her family, ambitious, and curious. She does some rather dangerous things, but all in a good cause.
  • The theme of asking questions about what our reliance on the internet and our interconnectedness is doing to us as individuals and as a culture is certainly relevant, but it’s not a didactic or propagandistic novel. The idea are presented by means of story and on a middle grade level.
  • The action is well paced, and the plot is believable within the confines of the world the author has created.

But . . . a couple of caveats:

  • When meshed (or maybe enmeshed) people meet they get a feed in their brains that tells them some basic stats about the other person, name, age, education, family status, and pronouns? Really, pronouns, like he/him, she/her. Luckily, no weird pronouns appear.
  • One of the characters, Ink, is a girl in the real world, but he’s a boy inside this virtual reality video game that everyone uses not only to play but also to communicate and move around and share information. That wouldn’t really be a problem, a girl choosing a male avatar in a game, except that it’s made very clear that Ink could choose to be male in the real world, too, if he/she wanted to. At least I think it’s clear, although nothing about this whole gender confusion era that we’re in right now is really very clear.

Were it not for the caveats, I would recommend Hana Hsu as a great story and a vehicle for exploring ideas related to the internet and social media and its effect on young, developing brains. It’s also got ideas and questions about family and how you maintain family bonds and how you fight injustice and solve social problems and how much is too much to give up in order to serve the community. But there is already enough gender confusion in this world as it is without adding to the mix. I enjoyed it, but I’m not recommending.

Operation Do-Over by Gordon Korman

Apr7

The entire plot of this middle grade fiction book hinges on a twelve year old kiss, that is, a kiss between two twelve year olds. I don’t usually like romantic relationships and crushes in middle grade fiction, but for this book I’ll make an exception. It’s a chaste, almost accidental, kiss, and the rest of the book is squeaky clean—and fun, and even thought-provoking.

Two boys, Mason and Ty, have been best friends practically since birth, at least as far back as they can remember. They are both nerds, and proud of it, interested in science projects and video games and time travel, not girls —until Ava, the new girl from New York, comes to town and gets the attention of both boys. Can their friendship survive crushing on the same girl at the same time?

SPOILER: The friendship doesn’t survive, and when both boys (and Ava) are in high school, senior year, things get much, much worse for Mason, all because of the kissing incident that broke up Mason’s friendship with Ty in seventh grade. I guess the central question of the book is: if you could pinpoint one decision that made your life go in the wrong direction and if you had a chance to go back in time and correct that bad decision, would you and could you?

Time travel done well is always fun, and this book does it well. (Although I didn’t really know what Madame Zeynab was supposed to be doing to add to the story . . .) I read somewhere that this is Gordon Korman’s 99th published book, and he has certainly hit his stride and then some. Mr. Korman entertains readers with mid-list middle grade fiction that might just make a few kids think about the impact of seemingly simple decisions and the value of an enduring friendship. 99 books published, he’s got to be doing something right.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Mar30

I didn’t know that Kazuo Ishiguro won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2017. I must have been busy the day that was announced. At any rate, I’m fairly sure he deserves the honor. There are layers of meaning in his latest novel, Klara and the Sun, and I’m not at all sure I got all or even most of them.

I don’t want to write too much about the plot of the novel because half of the fun is figuring out as you read what exactly is going on, who Klara is, what her abilities are, what this society and culture she lives in is like. We do know from the beginning of the story that Klara is an AF, and Artificial Friend, and what that means for Klara and for the teenager for whom she becomes an AF, is played out over the course of the novel.

The book asks some important questions about life and death: is death something to be avoided at all costs? What would you sacrifice to avoid dying? What would you sacrifice to keep someone you love alive?

Also there are questions about life and love: what is the essence of a human being? What is it you love when you say that you love someone? Is human love eternal, lifelong, and if it’s not, is it really love at all? Is the essence of love self sacrifice or imitation or something else? Is love letting go or holding close or both?

And finally, the questions are about technology and our relationship to it: is technology good or bad? Is it killing us or replacing us or enhancing our humanity? Can we become, through technological means, gene therapy or some other futuristic tinkering with our bodies and brains and genetics, something superhuman, better than human? Or are we losing something precious, our very humanity, when we try to create (super)man in the image of a god instead of living as a created being, under the authority of God, imago Dei?

My reviews of other books by Sir Ishiguro:

I look forward to reading more books by Kashuo Ishiguro, and I will be thinking about the implications of the story of Klara and the Sun for a good while. (Fell free to discuss details and spoilers in the comments. I’d love to hear your thoughts if you’ve read the book.)

The 6 Best Middle Grade Fantasy and Science Fiction Novels I Read In 2021

Dec30

I only read 14 middle grade fantasy/scince fiction books this year. So these are the best of those I read.

Published in 2021:

  • Once Upon a Camel by Kathi Appelt. My favorite middle grade fiction book of 2021.
  • The Beatryce Prophecy by Kate DiCamillo. My second favorite. At the monastery of the Order of the Chronicles of Sorrowing. Brother Edik finds the girl, Beatryce, curled in a stall, wracked with fever, covered in dirt and blood, and holding on to the ear of Answelica the goat. (Answelica is the stubborn star of the book.) It turns out that the king’s men are searching for Beatryce, but Beatryce doesn’t remember who she is or why the king wants to capture her. Can she elude the search long enough to recover her own story?
  • Stowaway by John David Anderson. A little bit Star Wars and a little bit Ender’s Game or even Dune, Stowaway takes space opera into the middle grade fiction genre and does it well. When Leo is separated from his father and his older brother and lost in space with a bunch of space pirates, he truly doesn’t know whom to trust. But he’s determined to find his father who has been kidnapped (maybe?) by the enemy Djarik soldiers. Can he trust the pirates to help him? Are the Aykari, Earth’s allies in the universal war to control the valuable mineral ventasium, even trustworthy? Can Leo be smart enough to get to his father beforetime runs out, and can he find his brother, too?
  • Children of the Fox by Kevin Sands. First book in a projected series.
  • The Accidental Apprentice (Wilderlore) by Amanda Foody. Also the first in a series.

Published before 2021:

The Third Mushroom by Jennifer L. Holm

Oct6

The Third Mushroom is a sequel to Holm’s 2017 book, The Fourteenth Goldfish. Both books have the advantage of being short, sweet, and simple, easy to digest and productive of not a few chuckles at the very least. However, both books are also somewhat over-simplified, especially in the science department, and both have a kind of snarky, disrespectful edge that just stays within my boundaries for likability.

Ellie, a seventh grade only child of divorced parents, doesn’t like mushrooms at all. In both books, Ellie has to deal with a grandfather who has two PhDs, which he brags about, a grandfather who ends up disguised as a middle school student in Ellie’s school as he coerces her into his wild and crazy science experiments and plays havoc with Ellie’s life. Grandpa Melvin is not a very sympathetic character, but he does make the book fun. He very obviously needs to grow up, but he also is fixated on making Ellie into a scientist like him.

This science obsession is an excuse for the author to shoehorn in all kinds of science information and mini-biographies of famous scientists such as Alexander Fleming, William and Caroline Herschel, Carolus Linnaeus, and others. It felt forced to me, but maybe kids won’t notice. Also, the science experiments were a bit wacky and unconvincing, but again maybe for beginning scientists the details don’t matter so much.

Both books are fun and easy to read. Grandpa Melvin is a crank, but he has some funny moments. Ellie, a seventh grader, has a date with a boy, completely clean and almost platonic, but if you’re wanting to delay that particular discussion, I wouldn’t have my second grader reading this one, as one Amazon reviewer said hers did. Also, (SPOILER): Animal Trauma Alert (in The Third Mushroom).

And, by the way, I totally disagree with Ellie about mushrooms and Brussels sprouts. Mushrooms are great, very tasty; Brussels sprouts are Tiny Cabbages of Death. And if you’re not sure what the mushrooms have to do with the actual story, I’m not either.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.
This book may be nominated for a Cybils Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.

The Countdown Conspiracy by Katie Slivensky

Oct30

“Six kids from around the world have been chosen for the first-ever mission to Mars.”

Miranda Regent is the genius thirteen year old from the United States who is one of the six astronauts in training for the international mission to Mars, a peace-keeping mission that will unite the world in a cause that transcends national interests and the recently concluded AEM war. But someone is out to sabotage the mission and the six kids who have been chosen for it. Can Miranda figure out who is behind the threatening emails and the attacks on her and her fellow astronauts before they succeed?

NASA fans and aspiring astronauts, aeronautical engineers and space scientists will geek out on this science fiction/mystery/adventure story. Since I live with a NASA engineer, I think I know what will appeal, even though my own “science gene” has never been in evidence. Miranda and her fellow teen astronauts are an engaging crew, and the tension and adventure really ramp up about halfway through the book when something big goes wrong with the whole program and the kids are left to save themselves and the space program and to preserve world peace all at the same time.

The fact that the kids in this novel are all geniuses may make them a little less relatable, but it also shows that kids are kids no matter how intelligent and talented. Miranda worries about her grades in astrophysics and calculus, but she also wonders a lot about how she can make friends with the other cadets and how they can become a team before the Mars mission blasts off. She thinks about how she looks, and even a little about the guys on the team and whether or not they are attractive and attracted. Not too much mushy stuff, lots of science, and a good solid plot make this book a must-read for sci-fi fans.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.
This book may be nominated for a Cybils Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.