Joe Gregorio
Just finished reading How to Build a Robot Army: Tips on Defending Planet Earth Against Alien Invaders, Ninjas, and Zombies. This book was really good, not quite fiction, not quite serious manual on robotics, it's a quick little read that could get a kid interested in robotics. The only downside is the three page chapter on 'fem-bots' where the author let's his chauvinism show through; cut out the reference to Love Dolls and you'd have a five star book.
The other book that came in at the same time, Doodles: A Really Giant Coloring and Doodling Book, is just hands down fantastic. The unfinished pictures come with instructions, from the very simple - 'color in the snakes' except the snakes stretch over three pages of the book - to 'draw what these birds have just picked up'. What pretends to be a coloring book pushes you to be creative, imaginative, and whimsical. We chose to have one bird fly off with an elephant while the other made away with a volkswagen bug. I'm not sure who's enjoying the book more, me or the kids.