Young readers with a penchant for math, science, and engineering are sure to fall in love with David Horn’s new Eudora Space Kid series. With the premiere story of The Great Engine Room Takeover, readers meet a precocious third-grader and her mad-cap adventures in outer space.
Eudora Jenkins lives aboard a multi-level Astroliner called the Athena and hopes to be its chief engineer someday. The Athena is the flagship of the Astrofleet, a science and defense force for the Planetary Republic, which comprises twenty planets working together to make the galaxy a better place for all living things. Early on, we learn that aliens adopted both Eudora and her older sister Molly. Their new Mom resembles a beautiful gray wolf from the dog-like species of the planet Pox, and their father, Max, looks like an octopus and hails from planet Pow.
Through an imaginative first-person narrative, this “most awesome girl” draws us into her space domain.
Looking for more than a typical childhood existence aboard this flying craft, Eudora’s latest desire is to figure out how to increase the speed of the Athena. After hacking into the spaceship’s PA system, Eudora’s enticing birthday party announcement works as a ploy to empty the engine room. Here she applies her formulas and makes adjustments at the computer terminal in an attempt to break the Astroliner’s speed record.
In Eudora’s funtastic, futuristic world, we meet all types of innovative technology and fabulous new friends.
For example, her pet drago named Bologna appears as a cross between a bunny and a dragon. Young readers will discover electropad devices that hold all the students’ books, notes, and work – and hear tales of exploding pumpkins that wreak havoc on a fuel storage chamber. Not only is this a book that fits in well with the STEM programs now in many educational curriculums, but the story quickly touches on an array of themes, from sibling rivalry and family variations to lessons about learning from our mistakes.
Laced with humor, Eudora comments to her audience, “And you thought your parents were weird!”
An opening illustration by Talitha Shipman sets the stage with a spaceship flying amidst a star-studded galaxy.
Readers will see lion and octopus-headed creatures and a being with Spock-like pointed ears. Details in the artwork throughout the book capture the extreme facial expressions of these spacecraft residents. Eudora’s gleeful look while destroying an asteroid at the push of a button changes to a disgruntled frown when the captain reprimands her. The final pages offer a creative word search puzzle, and the audience also learns that more cosmic adventures with Eudora are on the way.
Eudora Space Kid: The Great Engine Room Takeover will indeed win an audience among inquisitive, inventive-minded youngsters who like to push boundaries and reach for the stars.
