Animatronics: Build Your First Moving Creation: A Hands-On Guide to Making Machines Move (The C.J. Tinker Animatronics Series)

What if you could build your own animatronic character—with cardboard, string, rubber bands, and a few simple parts?

In Animatronics: Build Your First Moving Creation, kids become the engineers.

Join Tinker and SCRAPS for a hands-on adventure that turns ordinary craft supplies into machines that move. Young makers will experiment with pivots, linkages, levers, controls, and other real mechanical ideas as they design, build, test, and improve their own moving creations.

Along the way, kids will:

• Build simple mechanisms using cardboard and everyday materials
• Experiment with motion using pivots, strings, rubber bands, levers, and linkages
• Create moving faces and bodies with their own personalities
• Learn why prototypes matter before jumping into a final build
• Design their own animatronic character instead of simply copying one
• Test, troubleshoot, and improve their creations like real engineers

There are no complicated electronics or expensive robotics kits required. The focus is on understanding how movement works and discovering how much you can create with simple materials, clever mechanisms, and a little imagination.

And when something doesn't work the first time?

Perfect.

That's when the tinkering begins.

Packed with colorful explanations, experiments, challenges, and step-by-step builds, Book 3 of the C.J. Tinker Animatronics Series takes kids from wondering How do animatronics work? to saying:

I BUILT THAT. AND IT MOVES!

Perfect for curious kids ages 7–12 who love animatronics, robots, engineering, inventions, STEM projects, theme parks, making things, or figuring out how stuff works.