(Age 7+ but can be read to younger children) This creative story caught my heart and my imagination because it is innovative and heartfelt, but unsentimental. It is such a beautifully written and uniquely illustrated book for young readers; more fable than science fiction. It would be perfect as a ‘read-together’ because it has lots of appeal for adults as well as children. I was riveted myself and wished I was reading it aloud to a grandchild. On a vacation when I finished The Wild Robot, I was so excited when I discovered the sequel was immediately available from Overdrive, so I just kept on reading with The Wild Robot Escapes.
The story opens when Roz, a very special robot, finds herself marooned on a remote island. She is equipped to learn and increase her knowledge (as most AI inventions are), but she finds that in order to survive she will need the help of the animals on the island and that means learning to communicate and live with them in community. It’s a heartwarming and page turning read, full of great values, humour, self-sacrifice, tolerance, love of nature, resilience, and love. This book does not shy away from the realities of painful things in our lives, and indeed the first book ends with a cliff hanger. The sequel picks the story up seamlessly and also introduces another world that Roz needs to adjust to and then figure out how to escape from.
Peter Brown is a nature enthusiast and one day realised that the yearly instinctual activity of animals in the wild had a somewhat robotic aspect. Every year the animals went through the same routines and were almost programmed to do the same activities to survive and thrive. That is what gave him the idea for writing a story about a robot that interacts with animals. There’s a hugely interesting article by the author himself as he talks about the process of writing and illustrating this series: click here.
Joanne's Reading Blog 