Frank Einstein and the EvoBlaster Belt

Jon Scieszka's Frank Einstein and the EvoBlaster Belt is a funny science adventure for 8 year olds in which a boy genius invents a belt that turns him into a hawk.

What happens

Frank and his pal Watson are camping in Darwin State Park with Grampa Al and Frank's two robots. Klink is logical and very easily annoyed. Klank loves jokes. (Klank's elephant jokes make Klink's brain circuits blow, and it never stops being funny.)

But this isn't really a holiday. Grampa Al has a secret mission. Bees are dying in the park. Frogs are disappearing. A whole cave of bats has gone. And campers keep being scared off by strange animals.

Sure enough, the gang spot a Loch Ness monster in the lake, a ghost in the woods and a giant footprint by the stream. All three sightings lead to a huge black fence around Park Area 51.

You'll know who's behind it straight away, because the book shows you. It's Frank's rival T. Edison, with Mr Chimp, a chimpanzee who is a lot cleverer than T. Edison gives him credit for.

To get past the fence, Frank builds the EvoBlaster Belt out of Watson's gold wrestling belt. One button and he's a red-tailed hawk. Then a squirrel, a honey bee, a blackberry bush and some bacteria (which is how Frank ends up with his finger up Watson's nose).

What's clever is how much real science is packed in. Food chains, Darwin, how many millions of years life took to evolve, even how to tell the temperature by counting cricket chirps. It's all slipped in between the jokes, so it never feels like a lesson.

A small heads-up. The book shows nature as it really is, and an owl catching a squirrel is described in gory detail. There's also a campfire ghost story about a bloody hook. Most animal-loving readers will be fine, but a sensitive one might like a warning first.

This is the fourth Frank Einstein book, but it works well on its own.

What to read next

If they get attached to Klink and Klank, go back to Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor, where a smashed-up robot and a thunderstorm start everything off in Grampa Al's garage.