Making Waves: A Branches Book

Layla and the Bots #4

by Vicky Fang, Christine Nishiyama (Illustrator)

Layla and the Bots are so excited to meet the animals at the Surfside Rescue Center! They meet a sea turtle, a sea lion, and a dolphin named Splash, who needs their help. Splash won’t eat unless there is music playing... but he likes to pick his own music! Can Layla and the Bots build a music machine that will do the job?

Genres: Childrens, Science

80 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2022

About the author

Vicky Fang is the author of the Layla and the Bots chapter books series, the Best Buddies early reader series, the I Can Code board book series, and the picture book Invent-a-Pet. She is the author-illustrator of Friendbots, AlphaBot, and the forthcoming Ava Lin and One Mad Cat series. A former Google product designer, she now writes and illustrates children’s books full-time. Vicky Fang lives in California. You can learn more at vickyfang.com.

Reviews

[Julianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this book because it can teach you about sound waves and also a little bit about dolphins. I also liked how the dolphin's name was splash. 🐬

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Layla and her bots are rock stars and inventors and put both skills to work to help out an injured dolphin. While touring the Surfside Rescue Center before their upcoming benefit concert, they meet Splash, who needs to be encouraged to eat in order to be eligible for surgery. The team quickly problem solves, tests their invention, and makes important adjustments. The science behind their invention is solid and is explained clearly. The fact that it doesn’t work perfectly right off the bat, is not only likely, it also makes the information that sound waves are distinguished by both volume and frequency more memorable.Cute colorful cartoon illustrations, a brown-skinned main character, comprehension questions and instructions on how to design and build your own musical instrument all add to the appeal of this fourth installment in a new reader series.

[Becky B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Layla and the Bots want to help a dolphin at the Surfside Rescue Center who needs surgery. Can they figure out a device to encourage Splash to eat more fish so he can be strong enough for surgery and recovery?

Another fantastic model of drafting a plan, developing the equipment, testing it out, and revising it when running into problems. The machine they make is realistic enough to be used with real dolphins, and the problems they run into are very believable. And of course, they make the inventing process and scientific method into a fun story. Highly recommended.

Notes on content: The dolphin needs surgery to remove plastic it accidentally ate. The surgery and any recovery wounds are not shown.

[Eli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Layla and the Bots are going to perform at the Surfside Rescue Center, but first they need to figure out how to help their new friend Splash. The poor dolphin has a hurt fin and has been refusing to eat. Layla and the Bots discover that Splash likes music, which sparks a wonderfully helpful idea. The continued adventures of Layla and the Bots is really cute. They are easy to break into chunks for shorter reading sessions thanks to the chapters, and reading this over a few nights before bed with my child was very enjoyable.

[SamSamSam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love that these books contain actually interesting STEM content, and that it's explained at such an accessible level! I was disappointed at first that we were learning about sound waves in terms of volume instead of frequency because it invites a lot more room for error, especially where their project is concerned. I loved that Fang leaned into that and gave Layla some trial and error to experiment with!

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a strong entry in the Layla and the Bots series, a series about a young inventor and her three adorable robots. This was a very nice and age-appropriate basic introduction to sound waves and speech recognition for kids that I really appreciated as someone who works on text to speech technology myself.

[Brooke Shackelford · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a cute story about the main character finding a way to help an injured dolphin. It included STEM connections as the characters built a device to help the dolphin. My kids didn’t realize this was book 4 when we checked it out from the library, so we all want to go back and start book 1 now.

[Sarahs Reads ToKids]

My daughter Layla really enjoys this series.