ELECTRICITY

Saving the world might not have been in Julie’s holiday plans, but it sure beats doing homework.

In a quasi-dystopian future, machines are the last bastions of defense between monsters and humans. Julie’s Uncle Niko, a retired mech pilot, guards a lighthouse, keeping storms and monsters at bay with the help of Menlo, an automated defender. But when Menlo loses power and the monsters escape and begin wreaking havoc on the city, electricity might be the only thing that can put things right. The story blends fact and fiction; woven into the narrative are intricate, immersive illustrations of a variety of electromagnetic principles, including types of energy, power sources, and currents; voltage; and more. These topics are explained at a higher level than is typically found in children’s books, demanding careful attention to ensure understanding. Some readers might get lost in the details even if they find the concepts interesting. The book often reads more like a series of infodumps, with an ostensibly connecting thread of plot the author occasionally remembers to check back in on. Hints at a wider world, one that’s sustained primarily by renewable energy sources in the wake of human-induced environmental destruction, are intriguing but poorly developed. Julie and Uncle Niko are light-skinned.

Informative but clumsily executed.