This installment incorporates drones, a wireless camera, gecko gloves, and the Turing test as well as the concept of an ecosystem. As part of the series formula, science topics and gadgetry are integrated into the stories and further explained in a “Behind the Science” afterword. Story-crafting takes a back seat to scene-setting in this series kickoff that introduces the major players. Nina does the legwork and Ada provides the technology for their search for the dognapper.
Reed’s dog, Marguerite, is missing, they leap to the conclusion that it has been stolen. She records her observations in a field journal, a project that intrigues new friend Nina, who lives nearby. Temporarily housebound after a badly executed bungee jump, Ada uses binoculars to document the ecosystem of her new neighborhood in San Francisco. Using science and technology, third-grader Ada Lace kicks off her new series by solving a mystery even with her leg in a cast. An author’s note explains that the dialogue is imagined and reconstructed from Muir’s writing as well as from other accounts of the meeting.
A lovely two-page spread turns the opening to a long vertical to show the two men in the Mariposa Grove, relatively small even on horseback, surrounded by the hush and grandeur of the giant sequoias, while in another double-page scene, after a photo of the two at Glacier Point, Muir lies on his back at the edge of the canyon, demonstrating to an attentive Roosevelt how the glacier carved the deep valley below.
Gerstein’s depiction of the exuberant president riding off with Muir is enchantingly comical and liberating. (You can't ever quite take the boy out of the man, and Rosenstock's use of her subjects’ childhood names evokes a sense of Neverland ebullience, even as the grownup men decided the fate of the wilderness.) The narrative is intimate and yet conveys the importance of the encounter both as a magnificent getaway for the lively president and a chance for the brilliant environmentalist to tell the trees’ side of the story. In a boyish three-day adventure, Teedie (Roosevelt) and Johnnie (Muir) dodge, if temporarily, the confines of more formal surroundings to experience firsthand the glories of the mountains and ancient forests. Theodore Roosevelt’s 1903 trip to the western parks included a backcountry camping trip-complete with snowstorm-with John Muir in the Yosemite Wilderness and informed the president’s subsequent advocacy for national parks and monuments.
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