Newbery Honor winner and three-time National Book Award finalist Steve Sheinkin (Impossible Escape) makes a strategic move to the chess world with the riveting graphic nonfiction Mind vs. Machine. Chess Grandmaster and commentator Maurice Ashley (Move by Move) joins Sheinkin and Eisner Award-winning illustrator Thien Pham (Family Style) to create a suspenseful page-turner about the 1997 match between world champion Garry Kasparov and the IBM computer Deep Blue.
The work opens in the late 1700s with a prologue about Hungarian engineer Wolfgang von Kempelen and his fake chess-playing machine. A page turn returns readers to the present in Brooklyn, N.Y., where Ashley is playing chess in the park and relating the story of von Kempelen to his child opponent. Ashley, who delivered the play-by-play in the 1997 match, acts as the narrator, describing to the children the match's monumental events.
Sheinkin and Ashley keep readers in suspense as the text and Pham's New York City setting move between present day and May 1997. Sheinkin admits in an author's note that he worried he wouldn't be able to express the drama of chess. But with Ashley's help, Sheinkin delivers another narrative in the tense, exhilarating style that has become his trademark. Pham's art depicts characters experiencing complex and intense emotions, and he brilliantly employs perspective changes to illustrate the importance of the match.
History buffs, chess fanatics, and tech junkies will likely struggle to put this down, and anyone who's ever considered chess boring will certainly find out how thrilling it can be. --Jen Forbus, freelancer