awesome dawson is a secret superhero that uses junk and his toolbelt to help him solve a bunch of problems by creating great machines
1 book

Dawson is a genius at inventing things, and hopes to make the world a better place with his creations. Since he was small, he found interesting ways to recycle old objects into new things. Dawson's motto is everything can be reused - making this a fun story to encourage recycling. Dawson is so focused on finding new things to create that he can't be bothered with mundane tasks like chores. Unfortunately, when his grandest invention (a robot he makes out of a vacuum to do his chores for him) loses control and begins to run amok - it could be the cat food Dawson used for a brain - he needs to figure out a plan to deconstruct his construction. Dawson is assisted by his sidekick, Mooey, a talking toy cow head attached to a wheel that seems to possess artificial intelligence. The story is charming but a bit illogical. The problem for me was that it starts out with a fanciful but really realistic premise, that a boy with a gift for engineering uses his abilities to create amazing inventions. It is a bit fanciful but pretty grounded in reality. Then, when his vacuum robot goes out of control, the story switches gear into a pure fantasy mode. The robot somehow grows with everything it eats, and Dawson is flying a plane, and it feels more like a superhero story. Which is a fun story mode, but it doesn't jibe well with the earlier part of the story. Also, the message seems to switch back and forth between two ideas: recycling and reusing is great, and you should do your chores and not try to get out of personal responsibility. The story would have benefited by sticking to one grounding message.

However, the stars of this story are the intricately detailed and colorful illustrations, which seem to be the real point of the book which the plot just serves to deliver. The author is also the illustrator, and each page demonstrates a lavish love of drawing, precision, and creativity. The art was done by engraving on an ink-coated clay board, and then transferring those sketches to a drawing tablet and using an Adobe program to add color. In other words, creating all of these finely detailed pictures must have been a painstaking process. Many of the scenes are chock full of the odds and ends that Dawson uses to build his inventions, and the illustrations are playfully labeled to point out all the recycled elements that have gone into Dawson's new creations. ( )

Awesome book about recycling and reusing junk that's not really junk because it can be made and used for something great! ( )

super hero type story ( )

Oh my! I got this book way, way back last spring, when my library assistant was out with back trouble. I ended up hurriedly cataloging it and sending it out in the world without getting a chance to read it. And it was checked out so much that I never was able to really get time to read it myself.

Well, it finally got checked back in and I sat down yesterday to read it.

Oh my! What a great book! I see why it’s been checked out so much. Our title character is a scavenging inventor, always rooting around to find new things to add to an invention. His latest attempt at an invention goes haywire, growing larger and larger, and sucking up more and more of the world, until the entire universe is threatened with destruction. Dawson must come to the rescue with a new idea in order to save the world.

Great book. And how serendipitous it was for me to have a parent come into my school library a half hour after I read Awesome Dawson and tell me that her son loved to invent things….Would I have a book about that? Do I ever?! ( )