Oculum Echo: Guest review

This review was written by student Bronte L.

 

Written by Philippa Dowding

DCB

978-1-770866652

231 pp.

Ages 9-12

2022 

The robot Echo1 awakes from slumber and, with the help of Guide, a voice in its ear, and the robot bird Peregrine1, travels the continents’ four Oculum domes and the barren deserts. Echo1's task is to search for life and monitor the starting of a civilization of humans to make sure they don’t make the mistakes of the past. 

 

Outside of Oculum, Grannie’s farm is bombed, and Miranda1, Mannfred, and Grannie must lead the children originally from Oculum to safety. But their attackers, the UnRuly, are hunting them down, and they’ve got a new secret weapon. So, Grannie sends Mannfred and his friends to spy on the UnRuly, maybe even to try and stop them, but things soon go wrong. 

 

Meanwhile, after many weeks of travelling, Echo1 is starting to lose hope in finding life. Along the way, he learns much from his guide about Earth, humans, and his many special capabilities. But lots of questions remain unanswered, including what is life, what his name means, and what happened to the world of the Olden Begones? 

Oculum Echo by Philippa Dowding is the sequel to Oculum, the Silver Birch-nominated first book in The Children of Oculum series. It’s a middle school level dystopian, sci-fi novel, told from multiple points of view.  There's Miranda1, the oldest girl from Oculum, who now must help Grannie lead the rest of the children; Echo1, who is led by the voice in his ear and a robot bird that sends him videos of his surroundings; and Mannfred, who lived outside Oculum on the farm with Grannie before the UnRuly destroyed it. The book has important themes of leadership, curiosity, perseverance, collaboration, and showing the importance of taking care of our world and each other.

Although I haven’t read Oculum, the book before this one, it didn’t take long for me to become invested in the storyline. Each character’s experiences are so wildly different and inspirational in their own ways that it makes for quite a fun read! My favourite part of the book was definitely getting to see the world through Echo1’s and Miranda’s eyes. The lives they are accustomed to are so different from our current world, and, even though their Earth was mostly destroyed, there are hints at what it was like before the disaster, with playgrounds, paper, drum kits, pigs, fish, and all kinds of other things we take for granted. I would recommend Oculum Echo to any sci-fi loving kid that enjoys adventures. 

~ Written by Bronte L., Gr. 9

The Children of Oculum, Books 1 and 2

Tank and Fizz: The Case of the Battling Bots

Written by Liam O’Donnell

Illustrated by Mike Deas

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-4598-0813-3

163 pp.

Ages 8–11

2016

We all know cheaters, those vile people who manipulate circumstances in their favour, regardless of others.  At the simplest, they are kids who cheat on tests or lie to cover up some misdemeanour.  At worst, they are adults who perpetrate crimes for their own purposes.  It is so satisfying when a cheater gets caught because that’s what they deserve and it’s a small step in making the world a safer and better place for all.  It’s not surprising, thus, that when Tank and Fizz, our intrepid detectives from The Case of the Slime Stampede (Orca, 2015)  are asked by the school Troll Patrol to prove that wealthy and reprehensible classmate Rizzo Rawlins is cheating in the local battle bot competition, that the two monsters are eager to take on the case. If only all cheaters could be caught by Tank and Fizz.

All year, I had watched Rizzo cheat in class.  Math test, science quizzes, coloring contests.  You name it, Rizzo Rawlins cheated.  He bribed the school math whizzes for test answers.  His goons sabotaged classmates’ experiments.  He hired professional artists to do his cut-and-past craft projects. Rizzo Rawlins had to win at everything, every time, any way he could.  I had seen the trail of broken dreams in my schoolmates’ tears.  When I’d seen the sad faces of the Troll Patrol,  I knew Rizzo’s cheating had to stop.  And I was the goblin to make it happen. (pg. 21-22)

But, as is usually the case, everyone knows about the cheating but proving it is far more difficult.  Even with Tank’s code sniffer–her invention to sniff out codes originating from beyond the school–that proves Rizzo’s bot, the Rawlins Reaper, should be disqualified, Principal Weaver refuses to believe Rizzo is anything but a model student, probably because Rizzo’s father makes huge financial donations to the school.  When the two detectives follow Rizzo to the almost complete new stadium, Slurp Stadium, they witness his acquisition of a new illegal part for his bot and his interactions, by screen, with a masked hacker called the Codex.  But the search for evidence of Rizzo’s cheating becomes linked to a situation in which the Codex threatens Mayor Grimlock to suffer unforeseen consequences if the new stadium is ever opened.  The goblin and troll duo undertake surveillance, alongside magic-spinning friend, Aleetha, a lava elf, and discover a conspiracy involving Sanzin Balazar, the wealthy entrepreneur behind SlugCo and the new stadium, a banished demon of goblin legends, and a threat to Slick City of monstrous proportions.  But can they stop the chaos before everything is lost?

Liam O’Donnell has a fun way with words, and more so in his creation of the world in which Tank and Fizz live.

You know that feeling you get when you try to stop a demon from being summoned but accidentally help summon it?  It definitely takes the shine off your scales. (pg. 136)

There are double grubnug-fudge smoothies, glowshroom groves, spicy lizard dogs and choco-slug cookies, and mothers who scratch the scales behind your ears. (Aw.)  And Tank’s inventions, like her spybot and springers, are the contraptions of kids’ dreams. Mike Deas’ graphic novel-type illustrations suggest he got as much amusement as the author in creating the assortment of monsters that populate Slick City and the Tank and Fizz books in general. (Books 3, The Case of the Missing Mage is set for release April 2017.)

From Tank and Fizz: The Case of the Battling Bots 

by Liam O'Donnell, illus. by Mikes Deas

Since the book’s dedication is “To goblin detectives and troll tinkerers everywhere”, it seems only right to review The Case of the Battling Bots in October, the month of goblins, trolls, witches, elves and more. Moreover, the book was just nominated for the 2017 Silver Birch Express award, so it’s review at this time is only fitting.  But the outrageous antics of Tank and Fizz, all in good fun and with the best of intentions, will always entertain, regardless of the time of year, as long as early and middle-grade readers enjoy a bit of fun with their creepy and a bit, but not too much, of the graphic-novel  format to dress up a strongly-plotted story.