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How to Outsmart a Billion Robot Bees by Paul Tobin is Swarming with Fun
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Paul Tobin’s How to Outsmart a Billion Robot Bees features sixth grader Nate, who is 100% a boy genius—and I mean a genius, who creates a talking dog (named Bosper), builds robot bees, and invents strange pills that can cause you to become any number of things, from intangible, to a gorilla, to able to speak French! His best friend, Delphine, who loves holding pie versus cake meetings with her friends (because, of course!), is Nate’s only friend, since due to his incredible smarts, he sometimes gets lost in a world of his own. (Plus, Delphine thinks he’s sort of handsome.) When she and Nate hang out, a crazy and kooky adventure is always right around the corner.
Every Friday the 13th, Nate likes to invent three unexpected things, and often these things are the reason for the wild quandaries he and Delphine find themselves scrambling to fix. Anything from a pet bee named Melville (who stings their enemies—pet bees for the win!), to a car named Betsy (who has a crush on Nate and gets jealous of Delphine!), which keeps the plot super interesting and amusing. The rivals and enemies Nate and Delphine must face are also extremely intelligent and fall into two camps: the League of the Ostracized Fellows and the Red Death Tea Society, and they both mean business. The League of the Ostracized Fellows wants Nate to join their genius group, while the smart-but-sinister Red Death Tea Society decides they have to have Nate’s newest invention, the Infinite Engine, which would allow them to take over the world with its limitless energy, and they will stop at nothing to get it. Even if that includes swarming Nate and Delphine’s entire hometown of Polt with a robot bee army. How will Nate and Delphine stop that from happening?
Tobin’s Genius Factor series captures the friendship and fun these two share through fantastical obstacles, beginning with How to Capture an Invisible Cat and continuing in this second installment. Tobin’s great imagination makes for such a twisty-turny plot that middle grade readers won’t be able to guess what comes next—making these books hard to put down.
Eisner Award-winning author Tobin writes with just the right amount of zaniness and fantasy, and there is never, ever a dull moment. Filled with scientific inventions and secret agencies, How to Outsmart a Billion Robot Bees will become a favorite of middle grade readers, whether they are into science or not. After all, what’s not cool about a 6th grader “driving” a talking car? Nate and Delphine don’t seem to take the potential dangers too seriously, even when those dangers threaten to destroy the world, so readers can enjoy the madcap fun as the pair outsmarts the bad guys AND the robot bee army with their wit, their smarts, and their enduring friendship.
How to Outsmart a Billion Robot Bees is on B&N bookshelves now!