In Over Their Heads

February 15, 2017
Far in the future, a family of robots and humans tries to survive in this sequel to Under Their Skin (2016).Centuries ago the human race was wiped out by killer robots. Nick and Eryn, white, human twins who have been raised by robot parents from frozen embryos, are part of the new generation intended to replace robots and re-establish the human race. But Ava and Jackson are robot children (who present white), illegal now that human children have returned. The four are bound together by complicated pairings and repairings among their parents. They have all taken refuge in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, where they meet Lida Mae, who claims to be descended from a Pilgrim and a Shawnee chief and to live in isolation there with her family. Lida Mae says she wants to help. When Jackson and his father need to go to town for spare parts, he gives himself superpowers so that he can escape the police. Those powers will come in handy when the group encounters something in the cave that they did not expect and learn that Lida Mae is not what she claims to be. Haddix delivers her beleaguered-family-against-the-world plot (familiar from other series) in multiple perspectives, alternating the third-person narration among the four principals. Lida Mae's Kentucky holler-style vocabulary veers toward the extreme ("you'uns" crops up), but she does add some local color and style. Patented Haddix adventure. (Science fiction. 8-12)

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April 1, 2017
Grades 4-7 In Under Their Skin (2015), twins Nick and Eryn learned a shocking secret about the nature of their soon-to-be stepsiblings: they're robots. Now they, Ava and Jackson, and both sets of parents are on the run, out in the woods, trying to conceal the fact that almost everyone in the world over the age of 12 is a robot. At the worst possible moment, they run into an odd child, Lida Mae, whose family has been existing out of the loop for decades. Is she human or robot? Whose side is she on? Those are just two of the many questions that come at the kids like snow in a blizzard. In fact, they do find themselves in a blizzardand that's the least of their problems. As in the previous book, there are cliff-hangers in every chapter, and the tension builds to a fever-pitch conclusion. Indeed, so much comes at the reader, it is sometimes hard to keep the story straight, but there's no stopping until the heart-pounding conclusion. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: An author tour ought to help keep Haddix's considerable fan base on the hook for this series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)