Nova's Ark

This is a great science fiction book that takes place in a futuristic world of robots. I like that the author tells the story in 1st person, through the eyes of the robot. The little robot boy could relate to other little boys because he is always dreaming about becoming a pilot. Nova's father spends his entire life searching for a planet that has enough crystal to energize them forever. Nova decides to fly a spaceship without permission and lands on a planet. He is very creative and begins to build animals that come to life so that he won't be lonely. As if this book isn't creative enough, when Nova finds his father dying, him and his animal friends sacrifice certain parts of their bodies for the father to come back to life. The father realizes that Nova has found the planet that he had been searching for. The go back home and Nova is a hero. This book seems to be geared toward kids in grades 4-6 because it contains a lot of challenging words, like "menagerie", "spires", "sphere", "consciousness", etc. It also is written in a language that contains a robotic theme with many unusual names for things. The author also is very descriptive in order to always remind the reader that they are robots. He says, "his mother clanked his steel cheek with a kiss", instead of just saying that she gave him a kiss. The pictures are very bright and colorful and I like the scheme the author has chosen of having some pages contain words with a small inset picture on the left and a whole picture on the right. While other pages are filled with one long panoramic picture. I particularly love the full spread picture of the new world that Nova has found. The image looks so real and majestic with its shades of purple and pink. I also noticed that each page that contains writing and an inset picture, also contains a small picture pertaining to what the page is about next to the page number.