BEEP! Sometimes I Forget You're A Robot by Sam Brown

EVERY TIME I SEE A STAR SHOOT BY

I HOPE IT'S A ROBOT COME TO LAND IN MY BACKYARD.

A kid can hope can't he? His little toy robot doesn't do zip, but he longs for something to come out of the sky and take him off for a great adventure.

Then one night as he is lying in bed and looking out at the night sky, he sees and hears something startling!

BEEPS! Lots of them coming from his yard. It's a robot, all right, a big red one with yellow headlight eyes. Now the adventures can begin! Can he fly into space? Can he dive to the bottom of the ocean?

Well no. He just sits and beeps. This can't be a real robot. He's just a BIG toy. BUMMER!

What can a kid do with this thing? Well, if he stands on its head it makes a good platform to reach the big limb on the tree where he wants to build his tree house, and he can support heavy beams, and.... WOW! one thing leads to another, and what a superstructure they construct together! BEEP BEEP!

A friend is what you make of him is the theme of web cartoonist Sam Brown's wacky fantasy adventure, Sometimes I Forget You're a Robot (Dial Books, 2013). Brown's robot-loving kid is as cartoonish as a character can be--a stick figure with a circle for a head, googly round eyes and a slash of a smile extending beyond his head, and his robot visitor is as blocky as a stack of cardboard boxes, but getting beyond the BEEP, the boy's imagination turns disappointment to a great contraption in the sky.

For the upcoming holiday season, stash this one in the old stocking with Nathan Hale's The Twelve Bots of Christmas (see my review here) for a pair of robo-reads.