Unconventional Vehicles

April 1, 2021
Grades 4-7 This fun and informative entry in the Uncommon Compendiums series will appeal to lovers of vehicles of all kinds. Hearst provides hilarious asides as he presents facts about 45 quirky and unusual vehicles, which he defines as "just about anything that moves (and typically carries something else) . . . including animals!" Each entry's history, manufacturer, and year of production is accompanied by colored line drawings, diagrams and cross sections, and related factoids. Curious readers will learn about a handcar, a human cannonball truck, an unpiloted solar aircraft, the jet pack, Mad Mike Hughes' ill-fated Liberty One steam-powered rocket, a drivable monowheel (this one inspired a poem by Hearst), and a swallowable camera, among many others. The ostrich carriage's description even includes a true/false quiz. Kids will get a kick out of the Beer Bike, which includes Hearst's humorous warning--"Do Not Read Until You Are 21 Years Old (or 16 if you're in Germany)"--plus helpful German vocabulary. Kids will enjoy learning about these fascinating and outlandish vehicles.

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May 1, 2021
From Airboard to Zamboni, a lighthearted look at some of the wilder ways to get things or people from here to there. This gallery of gadgets has the potential to be as world rocking as Unusual Creatures (2012) and other volumes in Hearst's Uncommon Compendiums series were. It will have young readers wondering why they should settle for a mundane bicycle or (later) car when options like a jet train, the multirider beer bike, or the steam-powered Liberty One rocket exist...not to mention no fewer than five different personal jet packs. Kids likely won't mind that the author interprets his brief broadly enough to include a pizza-delivery drone and a swallowable pillcam. He also enhances his appreciative commentary ("How about this clunky monkey!") with a musical soundtrack available on his website and by occasionally bursting into verse: "Hover here, hover there. / Hover in your underwear." Jenssen plays the straight man with staid, reasonably detailed images of each vehicle, usually in motion or viewed from a moderately dramatic angle. Some of his small, anonymized human figures (those not swaddled in crash helmets and protective garb, anyway) appear to be people of color. Several vehicles are hand-, foot-, or, in one case, ostrich-driven rather than high tech, and the author closes with a nod to the environmental benefits of public transportation. Heady fare for budding inventors and engineers. (Nonfiction. 8-11)

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