The Flinkwater Factor

Marc Notes: Thirteen-year-old Ginger investigates a series of weird events taking place in her home town of Flinkwater, Iowa, beginning with people falling into comas while using their locally-made D-Monix tablets. Includes notes on inventions mentioned in the text that are science, sciency, or fantasy. Publisher Marketing: Ginger must save her high-tech hometown from robots gone rogue in this hilariously quirky 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? Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 06/15/2015 (EAN 9781481432511, Hardcover) School Library Journal 07/01/2015 pg. 78 (EAN 9781481432511, Hardcover) Publishers Weekly 07/06/2015 (EAN 9781481432511, Hardcover) Booklist 07/01/2015 pg. 72 (EAN 9781481432511, Hardcover)