Billie Blaster may only be 10, but she already has a list of school science award-winning inventions—not to mention an archnemesis named Hector Glum. Now she must save the Earth.
Billie Blaster may only be 10, but she already has a list of school science award-winning inventions—not to mention an archnemesis named Hector Glum. Now she must save the Earth.
People may know Billie Blaster because of her two inventor-genius parents, but she’s no lightweight in the brain department herself. She’s only 10, but she’s won top prize at the school science fair for, like, the last five years.
Her inventions are super cool, too. Last year she won top honors for a self-replicating robot named RoBurt. During the fair, RoBurt promptly built a robot wife, who promptly built a robot child, who promptly built his own robot dog!
That’s how cool Billie’s inventions are.
All that recognizable inventor coolness has also, however, earned Billie the ire of another brilliant local kid named Hector Glum. He’s really smart, too. But his inventions don’t quite match up to Billie’s.
For example, last year Hector unveiled his “Magnificent Flingatron,” a huge machine that can chuck a car into space. The science fair crowd was wowed … until RoBurt started building his family.
Hector got second prize once again.
Hector got so frustrated and angry that he used his Flingatron to toss RoBurt and his whole robo-clan out into the great beyond.
That made Billie sad. Which, of course, was exactly what Hector wanted. But Hector didn’t think about what might happen to a self-replicating family of robots tossed into deep space.
I mean, what if those robots were found by some alien meanie? And what if that alien meanie decided to get his new replicating robo-friends to build more robots? All of which then promptly built more robots? And what if the meanie wanted to use that army to attack the Earth?!
Looks like Billie Blaster will need to put her heavyweight brain to use with something other than a science fair project this time. She’s got to figure out how to stop an evil alien and save everybody from her very own robotic invention.
Of course, then there’s Hector. Those nemeses always seem to make bad things worse!
None.
Billie and her mom and dad believe in the power of science. Though frankly, their brilliant inventions tend to backfire.
Billie’s mom, Ursula, and her dad, Reynard, both seem very nice. And they care about Billie, but they aren’t necessarily great parents. They tend to be so focused on their projects that Billie is almost an afterthought. For instance, when Billie blasts off into outer space, they barely notice. And they simply ask how it went when she gets back.
Billie’s talking goat friend, Lucy (a product of Ursula’s animal intelligence enhancer), tends to be the most thoughtful individual in the mix. She asks Billie about her choices and points out that silly ones can have consequences. In fact, Lucy proclaims that wisdom can be better than intelligence. “It’s how you use your intelligence that counts,” she tells the girl.
“Dang,” “darn” and “heck” all show up once or twice in the dialogue.
Reynard Blaster once invented a blaster ray gun, but then de-invented it when he realized its potential danger. Unfortunately, Hector steals the blueprints and creates some blasters for the alien meanie, Bruhaha. Hector threatens to use the gun and turn Billie and others into a pool of goop. He also plans to mass produce the weapon and let the army of robots use them on Earth. (But Billie foils that plot with quick inventor thinking.)
A variety of things are smashed and bashed, and a couple explosions take place. No one is injured, though one person shrinks the height of a couple inches.
None.
When things go wrong, Billie starts wondering if her choice to make a self-replicating robot was a good idea. Do you sometimes look back on choices you’ve made and wonder if they were a mistake?
What do you do if your choices are the wrong ones? And what can you do to try and avoid bad decisions?
Billie also had to wrestle with her relationship with Hector. Do you think she could’ve made choices that would have helped their relationship?
What do you do when it seems like someone you know is always mad at you or just doesn’t like you? Are there ways to avoid getting angry in return?
Get free discussion question for books at focusonthefamily.com/magazine/thriving-family-book-discussion-questions.
Billie Blaster and the Robot Army from Outer Space is a quirky and rollicking adventure that’s laugh-out-loud funny at points. And it also asks kids to consider choices they make and the benefits they have in life. Parents should note, though, that the book takes time to giggle over some toilet and gas-passing humor. (For instance, Billie meets an alien creature that actually lives in a toilet. And in another case, passing gas eventually resolves a conflict.)
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Review by Bob Hoose
