Mad Scientist Academy: The Weather Disaster

Great review from School Library Journal!

Dr. Cosmic and his Mad Scientist Academy students are back for a second outing that is truly out there. The green-faced, wild-haired Dr. Cosmic has invented a wearable weather balloon and a CHAOS (Cooling/Heating Airflow Operating System) machine and is unnervingly optimistic about their success. As will no doubt be the pattern throughout the series, the students must absorb a crash course in this curriculum so that they can save both the professor and the day. Even adults reading the book aloud at school or at home will learn a few things. The colorful comic strip format is varied and dramatic. Not all readers will linger over the occasional info-packed box (“The Water Cycle,” “Types of Precipitation,” etc.), but the facts are made optimally interesting through dramatic and funny illustrations. Drama, humor, color, and format are indeed the main elements that make this and the previous volume so enticing—along with the occasional “KABOOM!” and “KA-BAM!” VERDICT Science fans and comics enthusiasts will dive right into this, but don’t deprive other readers; there’s enough fun here for anyone.

The first review for The Weather Disaster is in!

KIRKUS REVIEWS:

Having survived disastrous dinosaurs in the first series installment, students at the Mad Scientist Academy now attempt to comprehend the mystery of weather. Six students make up the class assembled outside the laboratory: an amphibious creature, a werewolf, a robot, a vampire, a giant insect, and a monster resembling Frankenstein’s. Dr. Cosmic, whose flaming red hair recalls another cartoon scientist beloved by children, is ensconced in a wearable weather balloon, ready to test its efficacy. His colleague, meteorologist Nimbus, works the controls. As the sphere spins into the atmosphere, readers follow his progress and study charts to learn how clouds form and what causes wind, rain, and snow. Sequential panels move the plot forward and present information, while double-page spreads portray climactic moments, such as when the students try to apply what they have learned to correct the flood in the greenhouse and the snowstorm in the pool house by creating a tornado with the CHAOS machine. (The rear endpapers spell it out: Cooling/Heating Airflow Operating System.) Characters use their particular attributes to solve problems and help one another. Adults will appreciate the knowledge imparted in this STEM-friendly series as well as the encouragement to question, measure, and experiment; children will be attracted to the appealing caricatures and the cyclone wreaking havoc on the cover. With outlandish situations rendering scientific concepts memorable, McElligott has concocted a winning formula for learning as entertainment.