Ricky Ricotta's Mighty Robot vs. the Uranium Unicorns from Uranus

Reviewed by: Bernie Alie - Kennebunk Free Library, Kennebunk, ME, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: August 10, 2015

Review

Reprint of the 2005 title. There are some text changes and new full color artwork by Dan Santat.

In this offering, the nefarious Uncle Unicorn hypnotizes the Mighty Robot into falling in love with a Ladybot. With Mighty Robot out of the way, Uncle Unicorn can destroy planet Earth. It takes Ricky's wits, his cousin Lucy's tears and her "Jurassic Jackrabbits" to foil the evil plan.

Full color illustrations on each page will appeal to today's visual kids. Most pages consist of an illustration with text. There are 5 "flip-o-rama" features, which require the reader to flip one page back and forth quickly to create the illusion of animation during some of the action scenes. In the final scenes, a wordless graphic novel layout takes the place of the illustrated text in the original. Although the Ladybot morphs and changes as in the original, added scenes depicting Fudgie and Cupcake's thoughts about cookies interrupts the action. Later, Lucy asks about the cookies, which is a distraction that does not add to the story. Concluding art lessons teaching how to draw the major characters are missing in this edition.

Readers new to chapter books will enjoy the action, the visual aspects and the interactive pages. Teachers will appreciate the frequent alliteration hidden in the humor. For example: "The big, bad beasties banded together and blasted the Robot's behind." Libraries will want to update their collections.

Overall Book Score: good