How Lunchbox Jones Saved Me From Robots, Traitors, and Missy the Cruel

by Jennifer Brown

  Throughout the season, we also worked. We designed and built a robot. We programmed that bot to do really cool things like pick up stuff and knock other stuff down. We invented a device that could help save lives. We explored a fire station. We made posters and buttons and key chains and helmets. We wrote and acted out scenes and chanted chants.

  Who knew science could be so fun?

  The Forest Shade Middle School Rallying Robo-Raccoons team is not an actual FIRST LEGO League team. And there is no “gracious defeat” award at FIRST ceremonies. But the Robo-Raccoons is exactly the kind of team that FIRST would welcome with open arms—a team made up of students from all walks of life who are curious and willing to explore something new, who encourage one another and find new strengths within themselves, and who, at the end of the day, aren’t afraid to tell another teammate, or even another team, that they did a good job.

  You don’t have to have science and technology experience to be on a FIRST team. Your coach doesn’t have to have experience, either. All you really need is some enthusiasm and a willingness to reach out and learn, just like Luke and Lunchbox did.

  To find out more about the FIRST program and possibly find or create a team of your own, visit their website: usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Just like the Forest Shade Middle School Rallying Robo-Raccoons needed Luke, Lunchbox, and the others to make their robot happen, I needed assemblers, programmers, coaches, and support to make this book happen. Here is my official thank-you to my “team.”

  Thank you to “Coach” Cori Deyoe, and to all the coaching staff at 3 Seas Literary Agency, for doing your usual amazing job of suiting me up and getting me on the competition table, ready to roll out of home base with confidence.

  Thank you to all the manuscript assemblers and quality-control bots at Bloomsbury, especially Brett “Ro-Brett” Wright, whose sublime editing skills and funky doodles make revisions fun. Also thank you to Nicole Gastonguay, whose beautiful design work gave our book-bot a perfect cover. And thank you to Beth Eller and the awesome sales team for presenting my bot to the world.

  Thank you to FIRST Robotics for providing inspiration on many levels. Thank you to Kathy Laffoon for introducing my family to the world of FLL, and thank you to Team #7223 for taking me on an eight-month journey through intense robotics fun. Weston, Jane, Jacob, Rand, and Christopher, you ARE the mighty, mighty ’Shakers!

  And, as always, thank you to Paige, Weston, and Rand for always showing up at competition time and cheering your brains out. You are all my favorite.

  And Scott, my main bot, you are the programmer who keeps me rolling over all the obstacles. I love you!

  Copyright © 2015 by Jennifer Brown

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  E-book edition published in August 2015

  First published in the United States of America in August 2015

  by Bloomsbury Children’s Books

  www.bloomsbury.com

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Brown, Jennifer.

  How Lunchbox Jones saved me from robots, traitors, and Missy the Cruel / by Jennifer Brown.

  pages cm

  Summary: Luke Abbott’s school is the losing-est school in the history of losing. And that’s just fine for him. He’d rather be at home playing video games and avoiding his older brother Rob and the Greatest Betrayal of All Time. But now he’s being forced to join the robotics team, where surely he’ll help uphold the school’s losing streak.

  ISBN 978-1-61963-454-1 (hardcover) • ISBN 978-1-61963-455-8 (e-book) [1. Middle schools—Fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction. 3. Brothers—Fiction. 4. Robotics—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B814224Ho 2015 [Fic]—dc23 2014019118

  Book design by Nicole Gastonguay

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  ISBN 978-1-61963-455-8 (e-book)