Love this Mad Scientist Academy drawing from a reader I met at a recent school visit. Beware the Tacobot!
The Tacobot 9500
Category Archives: Mad Scientist Academy
Malone, NY
An amazing trip to Malone, NY last week to visit a bunch of schools in the North Country. Check out the life-sized Mad Scientist Academy gate, the wall of robot Nicoles, the 3D Bean Thirteen shirt, and so much more. Talk about making a visiting author feel welcome!
Recent author visits
I just finished up several weeks of terrific author visits in the Syracuse and Rochester area. My thanks to all the amazing librarians and students I met along the way!
Mad Scientist Academy on WNYT
Our local NBC affiliate, WNYT just ran a terrific piece on the Mad Scientist Academy series. Many thanks to WNYT meteorologist Jason Gough for all his help on the book. So happy with how this segment came out!
You can watch the interview below. (It’s short, just a minute or two) and read my interview with Jason here.
BCCB Reviews The Weather Disaster
The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books has just reviewed The Weather Disaster and it might be my favorite one yet. Here’s a sample:
It’s pretty much impossible to discuss the Academy without referencing the venerable Magic School Bus and, fortunately, the MSA does not suffer by comparison. The graphic novel format, with tidy frames and several well-placed splash pages, is an excellent vehicle for organizing the lesson, and the orderliness of the visual presentation makes it easy to go back and review material. The send-ups on stock monsters are cleverly played, adding humor without sacrificing content. A page of climate and weather notes extends the information, and endpapers diagrams of the Sky Suit and CHAOS walk the line between science fact and fun.
No need for MSA kids to take a field trip: what could be more interesting than school?
Interview with paleontologist Carl Mehling
One of the best things about working on the Mad Scientist Academy books is that I get to meet real scientists as part of my research. When I was writing The Dinosaur Disaster, I got to work with a real-life dinosaur expert, Carl Mehling, a paleontologist and Senior Scientific Assistant at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
Carl generously agreed to sit down with me to talk about what a paleontologist actually does. He’s a fascinating guy, and he has one of the coolest jobs I know. Check out the whole interview here.
School Library Journal reviews the Weather Disaster
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.
Kirkus Reviews The Weather Disaster
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.
Dr. Cosmic Lives!
I am in awe of this amazing reader who dressed as Dr. Cosmic for Read Across America Day. He looks better than the real thing!
Amazon names Dinosaur Disaster one of the Best Books for July
Woo hoo! Amazon just named Mad Scientist Academy one of their four “Best Books of the Month” for ages 6-8!
Bookish.com loves Mad Scientist Academy
Bookish.com calls Mad Scientist Academy: The Dinosaur Disaster one of this summer’s must-read children’s books…
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