3 out of 5

I loved Stinky Cheese Man when I was a kid.  Who didn’t?  And the True Story of the Three Little Pigs?  Of course.  Jon Scieszka seemed to have the magic formula for appealing to wide youth audiences at that point: oddball enough to make kids who felt like oddballs feel at home; accessible and goofy enough to be tittered at by whole classes when the books were read aloud; and perhaps most important, trailing from that description – written with a tinge of winky smarts that made it acceptable to parents and teachers.  I still have those books on my shelf.  Do they hold up?  Good question.  I haven’t read them in a long time.

When I was getting into teenager bullshit, and designing my personality (and my bookshelf’s contents), I was very proud of my childhood tastes.  I still am.  So Scieszka’s books had their place there, only now I was old enough to drive down to Borders (R.I.P.) and pick up my own titles and so at some point, The Time Warp Trio appeared, and I thought it was cool that this dude had graduated from picture books to word books and I bet it’s super fun.

I have no memories of TWT, except that it was disappointingly mundane.  That everything happened the way I expected it to, and none of the characters felt real.  I did not collect the rest of that series.

Now I’m into adult bullshit, and still designing my bookshelf’s contents, and here comes Frank Einstein.  I says: I own a lot of Scieszka’s picture books (because I kept buying those, although, like Stinky Cheese Man, I haven’t read them in quite a while…); perhaps it’s time I gave his word books a chance again.  Maybe I just didn’t see some subtext when I was younger.  So I’m here to report: I don’t think I’m missing any subtext.  And Frank Einstein was just as un-immersive and predictable as Time Warp Trio, and if not for some well-interwoven light science and, admittedly, a breezy, easy-to-read writing style (being a book for youngins doesn’t always guarantee that), I might almost hate the book, as its surface level plot essentially gives you a last page “nevermind!” throwaway statement.  But… but I’m trying to be fair, and understand who this book is for.  And I’m settling on that it’s for, like, dumber kids with no genre reading experience to introduce them to smarter, more genre-y things.  (I’m sorta not really joking about this.)  I don’t think that’s who Scieska’s specifically aiming for, but I think he’s dumbing things down more than he needs to, or simply isn’t successful at writing for mixed maturity levels when its words over pictures, and I think he’s thus arrived at something you could hand to your “I don’t read much” kid and give him some awareness of atoms and particle colliders.  So to that extent, it works.

Frank Einstein is a genius kid inventor.  A lightning storm sparks some parts he left around, and the result are two “thinking” robots, Klink and Klank, who are smart and not-smart.  They assist Frank build an antimatter motor for a prize-money-offering science fair, which he needs to win to pay off the something or other on his Grandpa’s junk shop.  But what of evil inventor kid Edison?  Will he foil Frank’s plans?

It’s not that I was looking for twists a’plenty, but characters in Scieszka’s world are one-dimensional, and so fulfill exactly the aspects of the plot you expect.  What’s frustrating is that there is some smart stuff stuffed in here – creative ways of introducing some complicated science in a super digestible format, for example – and some chuckle-worthy humor, but the story never really builds on anything; it’s just one inevitable scene after another.  But see the note above: I’m throwing up my hands and saying that this is acceptable as long as you consider to whom this book may appeal.

Anyhow, just as Three Pigs and Cheese Man were madly enhanced by their illustrations, Brian Biggs art (and Chad Beckerman’s book design) adds much to the book: what Scieszka forgets to offer through his words, Biggs can present in the art, which is a cleanly cluttered cartoonish style.  The constant page doodles and entertaining diagrams also keep the book feeling “sciency.”

So essentially, if you’re curious to see what that author you remember liking is up to now, and hey, that’s a fun looking little hardcover book, I can say, without exception, that you shouldn’t suspect you’re missing out on some awesome kid’s book secret.  Frank Einstein is predictable fare, and mostly lacks the charms of them there classic Cheese books.  But you’re shopping for your phone-addicted cousin, and suspect he’ll give a book a chance if you can get it into his hands – well, Einstein is a good gateway to not only Scieska’s other work, but potentially to the world of quirky literature and geek culture you secretly hope the kid will get into anyway.