The Doom Machine

I got this for my nephew, who is slightly learning disabled, and so I checked it out before presenting it to him. I was delighted. A slightly skewed story that teaches some meaningful lessons while never quite taking itself seriously. Great for adolescents and not too bad for an old geezer like me. The characters quickly grow on you and you feel their nervousness as their predicament escalates. Great ending. I really enjoyed it. I'm sure my nephew will too.

I grew up a bit later than this period, but the atmosphere of this book made me nostalgic. I don't go into the details because other reviewers did great job. I just want to add that it's a good book for boys between 4th and 8th grader. The story is funny and adventurous, but sometimes becomes too silly for grown ups like me. However, that is something I would've enjoyed when I was around 10. The illustrations by Mark Teaque are great, too. I like the fact the book also deals with social issues. Overall, a very good Sci-Fi book for children.

Yes, this book certainly was a lot of fun to read. I've always appreciated Mark Teague, but this is the first novel of his that I've read. Would he be able to transfer his usual delight into it? Yes and then some. The story begins fairly traditionally. It's 1956 in a small town in New York when, horror of horrors, aliens strike! True to alien form, they abduct a few people: the local cop and his son, a mad garage scientist, his trouble-finding nephew, and a mother-daughter scientist team. The aliens' mission? Find a machine capable of creating wormholes and prepare Earth for colonization. While I enjoyed the first fifty or so pages, nothing at that time screamed extraordinary. But Teague has a story-telling gift and an overactive imagination that made this adventure come to life. The characters are wonderfully outlandish, secure in their distinct personalities and even in how they talk. Teague goes all out with his sci-fi genre in playing around with the space-time continuum (mind you, I'm not physicist, so I won't critique any of that). The story is fast-paced and consistently entertaining with plenty of action. Yet there is also plenty of heart, character relationship, and even a more serious environmental theme to keep this from being pure fluff. I thoroughly enjoyed this quirky little space adventure. I hope the kiddos will appreciate this as much as I did.

This book's ominous-sounding title isn't necessarily befitting, because this is a fun galactic romp with hardly any overly-scary events. In this science fiction adventure story, Jack and Isadora inadvertently become involved in an alien invasion and subsequent abduction. Isadora's mother is a professional, skeptical--and stranded (once her vehicle stops in a small town)--scientist, and Jack's uncle is a wacky inventor who has just made an amazing discovery that aliens will do anything to get. Not only their relatives are polar opposites, though. Jack is a misfit whose only redeeming quality is that he's mechanically-inclined, and Isadora is an intelligent prodigy whose only downfall is that she's claustrophobic. Add on to the mix that their traveling companion is a pig-headed (metaphorically speaking only, of course) rooster, and the reader will have to wonder if they're all doomed when they and other "ooman bings" get abducted by disgusting, creepy-crawly, spider-like aliens who stand nine feet tall and live in a matriarchal society. Aliens in science fiction tend to appear invincible, but eventually an Achille's heel (or eight, as the case may be!) is discovered. Until that final plot twist at the end, the book may be a page-turner and the reader may be on the edge of his or her seat. However, the scare factor here is somewhat diminished due to the author's sense of humor. The subtle humor keeps the events from becoming too scary, but also takes away a bit from a genuine feeling of looming danger. Neither are the aliens overly scary, for their thoughts and plans are revealed through omniscient storytelling, they are not presented as invincible, and they are able to communicate with the humans. My favorite aspect of this story is how the worlds depicted and described come across as genuinely different and unique. The illustrations help add to creating visual pictures. Whether it's 1950s Earth, a planet where virtually everything seems alive, or one inhabited by spiders . . . each one is very different and equally fascinating. Perhaps in part due to the comical, inventive take on the science fiction genre, this is a really enjoyable and unique read.

Mark Teague's work --- his artwork, at any rate --- is instantly recognizable to anyone who has known a kid in the last dozen years. His hilariously inventive illustrations for such books as HOW DO DINOSAURS SAY GOODNIGHT? tell stories in their own right. Now, with THE DOOM MACHINE, his first work of intermediate fiction, Teague proves that his storytelling skills don't start and stop with illustrations, but he is quite a talented writer as well. Let me set the scene for you. The year is 1956: the dawn of the Cold War and the height of the country's infatuation with all things outer space. Jack Creedle is a paper delivery boy in the small town of Vern Hollow. He tries to stay one step ahead of the town police chief (and the chief's bullying son, Grady) while not worrying his well-meaning mom too much and spending as much time as he can "borrowing" supplies from the local junkyard to fix up old cars. Perhaps inspired by his Uncle Bud, a dedicated inventor, Jack is a talented, budding mechanic. So it's good thing that he's around when Dr. Shumway and her daughter roll into town and can't roll back out again because their car has broken down. Young Isadora is an aspiring scientist --- with some surprising skills --- who looks up to her accomplished mother but wishes she had a little more excitement in her life. It turns out that Isadora is about to find excitement in spades. There have been recent reports of extraterrestrial activity in Vern Hollow, and, although Dr. Shumway and Isadora don't believe a thing until they have found empirical evidence, pretty soon empirical evidence finds them. Determined to escape from the quarantine imposed by the Outer Space Division of the U.S. Army, they load up Dr. Shumway's newly souped-up station wagon with Uncle Bud and his destabilizer machine (cleverly disguised as a refrigerator) in tow. When they encounter an alien search party, they (and the extremely valuable machine that can create holes in space) find themselves taken on board the huge flying saucer, prisoners of a ruthless alien commander named Xaafuun who just can't stand "ooman bings." Mark Teague's debut novel is a nonstop adventure, a wild and whimsical joy ride through time and space. What's remarkable is how Teague manages to include semi-serious ideas about time travel, quantum mechanics and relativity into what is, in the final analysis, an exuberantly ridiculous plot, an homage to the adventure stories of yore. In the style of old 1950s science fiction television shows and movies, THE DOOM MACHINE is a crazy combination of fact and fiction (okay, mostly fiction) as Jack and company encounter dozens of different alien species as they careen through space on an interstellar journey that none of them (or any of Teague's readers) will soon forget. And, of course, the novel just wouldn't be complete without Teague's own numerous illustrations scattered throughout, bringing to life even more vividly the crazy worlds of his imagination. ---