Review by Booklist Review
Four diverse middle-school members of the Brooklyn Science and Technology Killbot team are flying to Japan for the Robot Soccer World Championships when something attacks and crashes their plane, wiping out all but the team members and four other young passengers. Though they had been flying over the Arctic Circle, they mysteriously find themselves in a dense jungle with killer vines and strange animals. Survival will take teamwork and excellent investigative skills. The story itself is familiar: smart children left to fend for themselves in a hostile environment, with plenty of action and carefully parsed clues to keep them searching for a way home. STEM connections are robust, starting with Killbot team members calming one another by calculating the miles of wiring in the plane, or figuring out the physics of an unusual device that lets them defy gravity. This multiplatform series opener is similar to the 39 Clues books and will feature multiple authors and an online game. Try this with fans of 39 Clues and Margaret Peterson Haddix's The Missing series. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: This projected seven-book series is getting a big push by the publisher, who is taking best-selling Westerfeld on tour. Jennifer A. Nielsen is already on the hook for book two of this sure-to-be-popular series.--Welch, Cindy Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This first book in the Horizon multiplatform series, which incorporates a digital game for desktop and mobile devices, begins as an airplane carrying four members of a Brooklyn robotics team-Javi, Molly, Anna, and Oliver-crashes over the Arctic while en route to Japan. The students somehow survive, along with four other young passengers, but everyone else on the plane vanishes. Even stranger, they find themselves in a jungle, surrounded by unusual wildlife and vegetation. The third-person narration switches focus among Javi, Molly, Anna, and Yoshi, a Japanese-American boy also on the flight, as the eight kids try to make sense of (and survive) their environment, using their own scientific knowledge. In his first middle grade novel, Westerfeld (the Uglies series) creates a mysterious but believable new world, as well as a relatable and diverse cast of characters. The fast-paced action and mystery surrounding the plane crash, along with seeing how the characters react to the challenges that arise, should keep readers glued to this book and eager for the next one, due in fall 2017 from Jennifer A. Nielsen. Ages 9-12. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A mysterious plane crash lands a pack of kids in an impossible place in Scholastic's newest multiplatform series kickoff.Team Killbot is on its way to the Robot Soccer World Championship in Japan when the plane goes down. The New York-based robotics club is made up of leader Molly, who is African-American, Javi (short for Javier), who's a black Latino, Anna, who is hyper-rational but emotionally tone deaf and white, and Oliver, the youngest and also white. Post-crash, most passengers have vanished, with the exception of the robotics club, Japanese sisters Kira (rebellious) and Akiko (proper), an older white teen named Caleb, and half-Japanese, half-American manga fan Yoshi. Despite the plane's Arctic trajectory, they find themselves in a jungle. The flora and fauna are like nothing they've ever heard of (and are quite dangerous), but the real kicker is when they discover a device that can alter gravity. This is the first installment of a new multiauthor series to be tied in with an online game. As such, it focuses on introducing the characters and watching them explore their setting as they reason through different strategies, both for survival and to figure out where they even are. The setting is effectively developed, with a threat level that's high enough for effective suspense but not too gruesome, and the characters provide many points of entry for a broad spectrum of readers. A solid popcorn adventure. (Science fiction. 9-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
