Action Robots: 9a Pop-Up Book Showing How They Work

This novelty item delivers less than it promises, pairing somewhat sophisticated text about remote-controlled vehicles and other robotic devices with unilluminating if elaborate pop-ups. While pull-tabs and levers invite readers to manipulate paper-engineered equipment, the motions are rarely more than a back-and-forth movement, far too simple to intrigue those advanced enough to understand the often complex terminology. A CAT scan, for example, is said to provide ``three-dimensional coordinates'' to which a robotic arm can ``return with precision to insert probes, a biopsy needle, or medication''; the accompanying pop-up, a complicated-looking scene of an operating room, merely allows the reader to tug on a tab in order to get a robotic arm near a cardboard patient's head. Other spreads describe how robots can perform tasks impossible for humans, in settings ranging from outer space to the deep sea, from factories to nuclear power plants. The concept here is a nifty one; it's too bad the authors didn't borrow some of that robotic precision to delimit their audience. Ages 6-10. (Nov.)