The Flinkwater Factor
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Ginger must save her high-tech hometown from robots gone rogue in this “quirky, dryly funny” (Booklist) science fiction novel from National Book Award–winning author Pete Hautman.
Welcome to Flinkwater, Iowa, home of the largest manufacturer of Articulated Computerized Peripheral Devices in the world. If you own a robot, it probably came from Flinkwater.
Meet Ginger Crump, the plucky, precocious (and somewhat sarcastic) genius who finds herself in the middle of a national emergency when Flinkwater’s computers start turning people into vegetables. Mental vegetables, that is. In Ginger’s words, they’ve been “bonked.”
When Ginger’s father is bonked, she recruits her self-declared future husband, boy genius Billy George, to help her find the source of the bonkings. Soon they’re up against a talking dog, a sasquatch, and a zombie, while Flinkwater is invaded by an army of black SUVs led by the witless-but-dangerous Agent Ffelps from Homeland Security. Can Ginger get to the bottom of the bonkings, or will computer chaos reign forever?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Thirteen-year-old Ginger Crump lives in the town of Flinkwater, Iowa, along with a concentration of "Very Smart, Very Geeky people": Flinkwater is the headquarters of an Apple-esque tech company, ACPOD. Most of the town's residents, including Ginger's parents, work for ACPOD, which has several dark secrets that Ginger and her friends unintentionally uncover. Hautman's story unfolds in five sections, starting when a computer screen saver puts townsfolk into a coma-like state that Ginger calls "getting bonked." Ginger's friend and crush, super-genius Billy, figures out how to awaken people from the trance, and the pair's work continues in episodes involving talking animals, the mysterious Flinkwater Sasquatch, Ginger's hopes for a first kiss, and a Homeland Security agent with shady motives. Hautman (Eden West) weaves the plot threads together cleverly, but it's Ginger's dry humor ("A plague of mysterious comas is one thing. And having my dad bonked was even scarier. But losing net access was like taking away the air"), an equally colorful supporting cast, and the lore (and tech) of Flinkwater that make the story so enjoyable. Ages 9 13.
