The Winter of the Robots

Mudville

A Booklist
Top 10 Sports Book for Youth

“
Mudville
will hit a home run with baseball fans of all ages.”
—Sports Illustrated Kids

“Scaletta’s debut is a gift from the baseball gods.” —
Booklist

“[Scaletta] balances perceptive explorations of personal and domestic issues perfectly with fine baseball talk and … absorbing play-by-play.”
—School Library Journal

Mamba Point

“Entertaining and touching.” —
The New York Times Book Review

“Scaletta’s expertly voiced narrative offers an experience of Africa … in a tale tinted with magical realism that is by turns scary and very funny.”
—Kirkus Reviews
, Starred

“Funny, adventuresome, and at times serious, the story is about a boy trying to figure out who he is and where he belongs.” —
The Washington Post

“Suspenseful, strange and enthralling.” —
The Buffalo News

The Tanglewood Terror

Winner of the Minnesota Readers’ Choice Award

A Kids’ Indie Next List Selection

“This book is nonstop action. Scaletta is great at making the bizarre and possibly supernatural seem, if not ordinary, completely plausible.” —Minneapolis
Star Tribune

“Scaletta imbues something utterly ordinary … with a sort of mysticism.… The author’s examinations of sibling dynamics are on point, and the … relationship between Eric and his littler brother is thoughtfully developed.… Plenty to like in Tanglewood.” —
The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

None of this would have happened if I hadn’t picked a girl over a robot.

On the first day of school after winter break, Mr. Cole, our science teacher, hit us with a big assignment: the school science fair. We were supposed to pair up. As usual, my partner was Oliver. He’d been my best friend since we were toddlers.

“So what do you want to do, another robot?” I asked him on the bus ride home. Last year, our project was a three-foot-tall robot that steamrolled a papier-mâché diorama of Minneapolis. Oliver made the robot, and I made the diorama. The project won an honorable mention, which was good for sixth graders. Now that we were in seventh grade, Oliver wanted to win a first-place ribbon and compete at the district science fair.

“Yeah, I want to make another robot,” he said. “A better robot.”

The bus rumbled to a stop, and the door opened to let in a blast of icy air, but nobody got off. The bus was mostly
empty. There was a home basketball game, and all of the normal kids had stayed after school to watch it. All of the normal kids, that was, except for Rochelle. She lived on my block, but I didn’t know her that well. She caught me looking at her and waved. I looked back at Oliver.

“Can we do the same thing twice in a row?” I was only half interested in the conversation now. Rocky—that was what kids called her—Rocky waving at me was distracting. Girls didn’t usually wave at me. I wondered what it meant, if anything. Was she saying, “Hey, caught you checking me out”? Or was she saying, “Howdy, neighbor”? Maybe it was nothing.

“We’re not doing the same thing,” said Oliver. It took me a moment to remember what he was talking about. “We’re going to make a completely new robot.”

“It’s the same
idea
.”

“That’s what scientists do. They revise an idea, evolve it, and make it better.” Both of Oliver’s parents were scientists, so he would know. He was a mad scientist in training. He already had the brilliant mind, the wild hair, and the thick glasses. All he needed was a hunchbacked assistant.

The bus turned onto the bridge across the Mississippi River. The houses were smaller on our side of the river, a bit more run-down and closer together. North Minneapolis is considered the worst part of Minneapolis, but we lived in the nicest part of North, in a neighborhood called Camden.
Mom says it’s the Edina of North Minneapolis. You have to be from around here to get that joke.

Rocky looked intently out the window, searching the riverbanks. If I had any courage, I would have shouted out something witty—“Lose a contact lens down there?”—but I didn’t. She caught me looking at her again. This time she didn’t wave, but she did smile.

“What will the robot destroy this time?” I asked Oliver. His robots always destroyed stuff. His ideal project would probably be an eight-foot-tall robot that stormed around the auditorium smashing all the other projects to smithereens.

“That’s the great part,” he said. “We’ll pit it against last year’s robot.”

“You’d let Robbie get beat up?”

“It’s a machine, Jim. You can’t get sentimental.”

“I don’t see the point.”

“It’s more challenging. The cityscape tested the robot’s mobility, but it didn’t fight back. What I really like is robot battles. I would have done it last year, but I didn’t have time to build two robots.”

“I mean, I don’t see why it has to destroy anything. Why can’t it … fold laundry or something?”

“You sound like my mother,” he said.

“I sound like a guy who has to do his own laundry.” I stole another look at Rocky, but now all I could see was the back of her head.

“Battles are more theatrical,” he explained. “That’s all.”

“What am I going to do?”

“Good question.” He didn’t come up with an answer before the bus stopped to let him off.

“Do you want to come over?” he asked. “We could get started.”

“Nah. I have to move a snowbank before dark.”

“OK. I’ll email you some sketches.” As the bus pulled out again, I watched him hurry down the icy sidewalk toward home, with his hands stuffed in his pockets and his knit hat not quite straight on his head.

He did have an assistant, I realized. He had me.

I didn’t have a hunched back yet, but I would by the end of the winter. Dad made me do all the shoveling, and it was the snowiest winter in Minneapolis since I’d been born. There was a six-foot pile of snow by the driveway where I’d dumped all the snow so far. Now I had to move the entire mountain before it snowed again; otherwise, there would be no place to put the new stuff.

The next bus stop was right in front of my house. I dropped my backpack inside and went straight for the shovel. An hour later I was already hurting, and I’d barely made a dent. Why didn’t Oliver build a robot that shoveled snow? I wondered.

“Hey,” said a girl’s voice behind me. I lowered the shovel and turned around. It was Rocky.

“Hey,” I said. “You aren’t at the game?” Like I hadn’t even noticed her on the bus.

“Nah,” she said. “You don’t have a snowblower?” She eyed the metal storage shed sitting on our lawn next to the garage.

“Nope. That’s my dad’s stuff,” I said. “He sells—”

“Security systems, I know. He keeps trying to talk my dad into buying one.”

“Ha. Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be,” she said. “Do you want to borrow our blower?”

“Is it cool with your dad?”

“Oh, he’d freak if he knew, but he won’t be home until after midnight.”

“Um …”

“I’m kidding!” she said. “Seriously, it’s fine.”

“Thanks. Seriously, that would be awesome.”

“Just being neighborly,” she said.

Even if I’d known she was setting me up, I would have used the snowblower.

My little sister Penny was waiting for me inside. She’s in third grade.

“You cheated!” she said.

“Cheated on what?”

“You used the neighbors’ snow machine.”

“So what? Dad wants me to clear the driveway. He never said I had to
shovel
it.”

“So you don’t mind if I tell him?”

“Nope. Go right ahead.”

I saw her eyes dim and then brighten.

“What if I told the
neighbor
?”

“She said I could use the blower.”

“You talked to the girl. Not Mr. Battleship. It’s
his
machine.”

The neighbors’ name was Blankenship, but Battleship would have been a good name for Rocky’s dad. He was huge.

“All right. What do you want to keep your mouth shut?”