Tom Swift and His Triphibian Atomicar

Rating:
Summary: Best Tom Swift, Jr. book of the series!
Review: Tom's car drives, flys AND goes underwater! What else do you need???? And I believe there's a section where Sandy and Phyllis make yet ANOTHER picnic from which Tom and Bud have to dash! Holy dating dilemma!

Rating:
Summary: It took less than ten pages to hook me on the series
Review: When I was in elementary school, you could easily identify the kids interested in science. They were the ones who read the books in the Tom Swift Jr. series. We traded books with each other and passed information about what books were in which library. This one is the first in the series that I read and it hooked me in the first few pages. After I finished it, I went out and scrounged for every Tom Swift Jr. book that I could find, begging my friends to allow me to read their copies.
Tom Swift Jr. is a teenage inventor and in this story, he is in the process of inventing a car that can fly and also serve as a boat. It is made possible by two of his inventions chronicled in previous books in the series, the repelatron and a miniature nuclear reactor. The repelatron is a device that forces matter away from it; hence it can be used for propulsion. Several other inventions described in previous books are also used, so if you read this one first, some of the references will be confusing. Of course, my reaction was to seek out and read all of the previous books.
In this story, Tom and his usual group are off to the country of Kabulistan. The Shah of Kabulistan has invited them over, hoping that they will help the economic development of the country. There are of course an evil group whose goal is to find the lost ruby mine before the Swifts discover it. The episode is quite formulaic, with a mini cliffhanger at the end of most chapters, but youngsters with an interest in science will love it.
What has kept the Tom Swift Jr. series topical is the fact that you learn very little science form the books, the main point is a love of science, technology and adventure. This is not restricted to any single generation, so modern children can enjoy them just as much as the earlier ones have.