Down to the Sea in Subs: Bitty Bot's Big Beach Getaway by Tim McCanna

AT THE BEACH AT BOTCO BAY,

ROBOTS LOVE TO SPLASH AND PLAY.

But Bitty Bot has qualms about the likelihood of rust in his grippers and sand in his gears. From their floats in the surf, his parents provide advice:

"YOU NEED RUSTPROOF ROBOT OIL.

COVER EVERY COG AND COIL."

Yurghh! Easy, Greasies! Bitty Bot opts for recruiting a couple of robot tots, rounding up some metal flotsam and jetsam, and building an under-the-bay submarine, and after the launch, captain and crew cruise beneath the sea and peruse the underwater beings.

CRABS AND SNAILS,
SHARKS AND WHALES!

A SUNKEN SHIP!
WHAT A TRIP"

It's Captain Bitty's kind of day at the beach until the sub springs a leak. YEEK!

But a bevy of beautiful mermaids help the hapless bots rise to the occasion, and soon Captain Bitty and his crew, Clank and Smitty, have their treads firmly back on the beach and are ready to roll! Bitty even begs his parental cyborgs for more fun in the sun and sand with his new surfside bot buddies, and in Tim McCanna's Bitty Bot's Big Beach Getaway (Simon and Schuster, 2018), his summery sequel to his first bot book, Bitty Bot, artist Tad Carpenter provides plenty of sunny yellow hues for his seaside scenes and contrasting watery shades for his charming little surfside robots' undersea explorations in a somewhat different "Come on in! The water's great!" story for young novice beach goers.

Always quick with a quip, Kirkus Reviews says “A delightful sea-quel.”

Bot Glut: Robots Rule: Lots of Bots by C.J. Richards

A section of the butler-bot's head melted away, and a moth-bot launched itself into the air as the robot began to spin in a circle. "Foreign Body contamination!" it said, and drove itself into the swimming pool.

George dropped all but one of the towels he was holding. He twisted and hurled the towel over the moth-bot, trapping it on the ground. George brought his foot down on top of it with a satisfying crunch.

Now he had proof to show Professor Droid that he was right about Micron and his robotic bugs. He leaned down to gather the pieces carefully in the towel.

A buzzing noise at his back sent a tingle up his spine. He felt the air go cold as a strange shadow spread over the ground. George turned slowly and found himself face-to-face with a massive swarm of deadly moth-bots.

After his near-destruction ordered by the evil genius Dr. Micron, the cyber-talented George Gearing is at last beginning his promised internship at TinkerTech, which is in the throes of the upcoming release of their hot new product, the Mod, something like a super iPod married to Google glasses, but after a series of suspicious accidents, George finds himself shunted off by Professor Droid to cleaning detail under the supervision of OCD-Bot, an obsessive-compulsive cleaner who speaks only in rhymes. Even more annoying is George's special robot Jackbot's romantic obsession with George's nemesis, Patricia Volt's personal bot, Cookie.

But OCD-Bot's janitorial duties allow access to every part of TinkerTech, and George manages to get inside the abandoned office of the imprisoned Dr. Micron to download information about his parents, former TinkerTech employees who disappeared after an unexplained accident. and uncovers a link to the secret Project Mercury. In trouble for being AWOL from his cleaning assignment, George is demoted to work with assembly bots, packaging the Mod in mailing containers in preparation for its media launch the next day.

But people at TinkerTech who are beta testing the Mod are behaving strangely, even the CEO himself, Professor Droid, father of George's best human friend, Ann Droid, who seems to be somehow mesmerized. Suspicious, George swipes a Mod, puts in the contact lenses that form its screen and the earbuds in his ears, and finds out what the Mod can do (besides a constant individualized entertainment and news-feed)--receive alpha waves which effectively suspend the conscious mind and turns humans themselves into robots--bots controlled by (whom else?), Dr. Micron, a sort of nefarious Steve Jobs on steroids whose plan is to control the world through his purported entertainment device.

When Micron discovers that his plan is again compromised by George Gearing, he unlooses his deadly moth-bots and threatens to destroy George's parents, held in suspended animation in the underground Project Mercury bunker into which he lures George, Ann, and Jackbot.

It's a classic BWWAAA-HA-HAAAA! moment for Micron.

"If I could save my atomic data indefinitely, I could live forever. I could be a god!" Micron raves maniacally.

For kids who liked the non-stop chases, bot battles, and bad-guy comeuppances of Book One in this series, The Junkyard Bot: Robots Rule, Book 1, there's plenty more where that came from in C. J. Richards' second installment, Lots of Bots (Robots Rule) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015).

Richard's text is easy, action-packed, and studded with humor, especially in the character of OCD-Bot ("A break is what I do not take!) and the lovelorn Jackbot's AI-assisted yearnings for the truly heartless Cookie. But in the final chapters Richards also introduces more serious themes--George's longing for his parents, the role of friendship--human and robot, and the very real fear abroad in the land of intrusive digital media which threatens of overwhelm the human side of us all. With Dr. Micron still a force and the quest to locate his parents' atomic data to restore them to life, George Gearing has his work cut out for him in the no-doubt forthcoming Book Three of the series.

Zap Flap! Frank Einstein and the Electro-Finger by Jon Scieszka

Frank Einstein quickly slides the lever up on the Electro-Finger. "Maybe just a bit more power!"

The raft spirals deeper into the whirlpool above the dam. Klink's webcam eye twirls in circles. "BEEEEEP!" "Badang badang badang!" bleeps Klank.

Frank analyses the situation. "So much for THAT hypothesis."

Watson pulls the tape of his mouth. "Hypothesis? I've got a hypothesis. We are goners!"

The raft spins crazily around the inside of the whirlpool.

"OK! Electrical energy didn't work," says Frank. "Let's use Newton's Third Law!"

When Frank's arch-nemesis T. Edison destroys all sources of electricity except his hydroelectric dam, prices of service double in Midville and hit his fix-it Gramdpa's wallet hard. But Frank Einstein, boy inventor, has a plan, based on Nicola Tesla's unrealized prediction that electricity can be generated by harnessing the force from the earth's magnetic field.

Magnetism comes from moving electrons moving in huge loops.

What are moving electrons called? Electricity.

Invisible. Wireless. Electricity.

With help from his artificial intelligence robot Klink and his mechano-robot Klank, and his nature scientist classmate janegoodall, Frank sets up a demonstration of his wireless electro-finger at free movie night when most of the Midvillians are watching an old Tarzan movie at the drive-in. The demo is a success, powering the projector, sound system, and lights, but T.E. and his finger-spelling chimpanzee henchman manage to short out the town's beloved mechanical elephant Topsy and persuade the townspeople that Frank's Electro-Finger is at fault.

But Frank's loyal but non-scientific sidekick Watson, has a hot idea, to follow the energy right to the one place making electricity--the turbine beneath Edison's dam, and when Frank and Klink and Klank go looking for Watson, they find themselves prisoners of T. Edison in a rubber raft racing toward the intake valve and spinning down, down, down into that vortex toward certain destruction and victory for the power-mad T. Edison. Even Frank's magnetism theories fail him.

But not Klank's loyalty, in Jon Scieszka's sequel to his best-selling Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor: Book One, his magnetic latest, Frank Einstein and the Electro-Finger: Book Two (Amulet Books, 2015). There is plenty of fun in the wise-cracking interplay of Frank and his very different pals, human and robotic, an evil and literally power-mad arch villain, and a near down-the-tube wash-out for the good guys before virtue triumphs over greed again in the best sci fi tradition. However, the added virtue to Scieszka's series is the thorough review of physics that flows seamlessly through the plot, with funny but nifty illustrations by artist Brian Biggs to make the science theory clear to middle readers. Robot- and gizmo-loving boy readers will find this one right down their vortex.

Scieszka has major credentials as a writer with special insight into young readers, especially those of the male sort. The author of Guys Read: Funny Business, Scieszka has many award-winning works for kids, from his classic fractured fairy tales The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and The Frog Prince, Continued (Picture Puffin) through his award-winning fantasy series, The Time Warp Trio, his heavy-duty preschool series for young gearheads, Jon Scieszka's Trucktown, right down to his recent metabook book-about-books hit, It's a Book,, this is an author who is always on the cutting edge of writing for youngsters. For the further adventures of Frank Einstein, Scieszka also has a third book in this series forthcoming in the fall.

Cyber Crusader! The Junkyard Bot: Robots Rule! by C. J. Richards

George plugged his ears. "Jackbot!" he shouted.

The door opened, and three feet of scrap and spare parts rattled into the room. Jackbot's head tilted toward the bed and his green eyes flashed."Yes, George," he said in his expressionless mechanical voice.

"Shut that thing up, would you?"

Jackbot scooped up the alarm clock in his pincer and put it on the floor. He raised a metal foot.

CRUNCH!

"That was--uh--a little extreme," George said. But it was no use blaming Jackbot. Robots just do what they are told.

George Gearing is a lonely orphan, living in a rundown suburb of Terabyte Heights with his grumpy junkyard manager uncle. But George is a born gearhead. Lacking the funds to buy his own deluxe model, he has built his own ramshackle robot, and secretly thinks of him as something like his best friend.

So when Jackbot is hit by a robocar owned by the top robotics expert of TinkerTech, Dr. Droid, George quickly accepts the offer of its passenger, Droid's daughter, Ann Droid, to help him rebuild Jackbot. Sneaking into the spare parts department of TinkerTech with Ann, George outdoes himself. Although the rusty and dented Jackbot looks the same on the outside, George is able to rewire him with AI, artificial intelligence, the Holy Grail of robotics, and he has powers no other robot, even Dr. Micron's best at Tinker Tech, possesses. Jackbot can think for himself.

But soon word of George's brilliant breakthrough reaches Dr. Micron, who quickly realizes that gaining the secrets of Jackbot's operating system will give him control over the robots of Terabyte Heights and eventually allow him every evil genius' goal--to rule the world. He kidnaps and downloads Jackbot, and when George and Ann try to rescue the robot, they find themselves captives of the nefarious Dr. Micron and ironically held as the prisoners of a traitorous Jackbot, with a timebomb ticking away inside him. Only George can save himself, Ann and Dr. Droid, and the rest of the world by his insight into Jackbot's most inner circuitry.

"Jackbot! I can see you're in there! And you're fighting to override Dr. Micron's program. This is no time to die!" said George.

"I'm a robot," said Jackbot. "My existence is merely a bunch of data streams. FIFTEEN SECONDS!"

"You're not just a robot, Jackbot. You're my friend."

"Sorry, George," said Jackbot. His eyes turned red again. "THREE, TWO.... "

George crouched on the floor and covered his head with his hands, waiting for the explosion. Nothing happened. He peered through his fingers.

Jackbot's eyes were green. "Just kidding!" he said. "You had me at a minute to go."

But with the evil would-be world despot Dr. Micron at large, George, Jackbot, Ann and her dad Dr. Droid, are the only cyber saviors able to take on Micron's legions of slave robots and defeat his evil plan. Readers will suspect that sequels are set to follow (the words Book One on the cover are a clue), and there is hope for mankind, as George learns when he returns to school and finds that they have reinstated their old employee as custodian after seriously bad experiences with his robotic replacement.

"It's great you got your job back, Mr. Cog." said George.

"Yeah," said the janitor. "On account of the robot was the tool of a homicidal maniac who wanted to take over the world... and I ain't."

C. J. Richard's just published The Junkyard Bot: Robots Rule, Book 1 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014) is a cyborg savant's dream. George can't wait to work as Dr. Droid's apprentice at TinkerTech, and with Dr. Micron still on the loose, the stage is set for another humorous robot romp through the easy-reading pages of Book Two. While the plot of The Junkyard Bot: Robots Rule, Book 1 is a recognizable chunk of fictional code, Richard's wit makes this robot tale one that is mostly character-driven, with the strong portrayal of George, Ann Droid, and the star of the show, Jackbot. With edgy cartoon illustrations, blueprint endpapers, page decorations by illustrator Gora Fujita, and page-turning heroic action that will entice even reluctant readers, it looks as if robot lovers are set for rip-roaring cyber sequels for a while.

'Bot Buddies: When Edgar Met Cecil by Kevin Luthardt

EDGAR HAD A NICE LIFE.
HE LOVED TO PLAY WITH HIS BEST FRIEND QUINCY.
AND AFTER SCHOOL, THEY LIKED TO BUILD STUFF.
ON WEEKENDS THEY WATCHED SCARY MOVIES.

ONE DAY EDGAR'S PARENTS TOLD HIM THAT THEY WERE MOVING.

Nooooooo! Suddenly, Edgar is whisked away from his perfect life and finds himself in a new place which looks completely alien.  The new school is different and the food in the cafeteria looks like something he's never seen before. The kids are downright weird looking, beyond anything he saw in those scary Saturday night movies!  And one of  them, Cecil,  keeps staring at him with a look that Edgar can't read.

It's a kid's worst nightmare.  Edgar is indeed a stranger in a strange land.

THE KIDS LOOKED WEIRD.  THEY DRESSED FUNNY. THEY LISTENED TO BIZARRE MUSIC. THEY ATE STRANGE FOOD.

What the narrative doesn't tell (but the illustrations do so well) is that Edgar is some sort of robotic droid and the kids in his new school actually are alien forms of intelligent life.  Cecil is more than a weird version of  Edgar's kind; he's another life form altogether!  Cecil keeps his distance from the others at recess, but that weird guy seems to be shadowing him everywhere he goes.

And then one day Cecil gets really close.  Edgar blurts out that he's scared.

"YOU'RE SCARING ME!" THE BIG WEIRD KID SAID.

Suddenly Edgar sees himself the way the others must see him. To them, he's weird and scary! That realization is the stuff of Kevin Luthhardt's When Edgar Met Cecil (Peachtree Publishing, 2013). While the storyline is the quintessential new-kid-at-school story,  Luthardt's big, bright, and funny illustrations show what Edgar doesn't tell us, that he's an robot, an android among aliens and they're all weird in wondrously different ways.  Still, Luthardt's conclusion shows the two discovering that they have a lot in common despite their differences, and all's well, as Cecil admits to Edgar:

"YOU KNOW, YOU'RE PRETTY COOL FOR A NEW KID," SAID CECIL.

And, as Kirkus Reviews, sums it up, "This far-out lesson in making friends understands that to the new kid in school, everyone is going to seem scary and weird."

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.

Robot on the Rampage: Awesome Dawson by Chris Gall

WHEN I WAS A BABY, I INVENTED A NEW KIND OF HAT.

All babies stick silly stuff on their heads, but what makes Dawson an awesome inventor is that from the git-go, his unique creations are made from castaway found objects. That hat was the dog's old water bowl, and with that, he's off on a career of collecting what other folks would call trash and transforming it into inventive treasures.

When Dawson was lonesome, he invented a best friend, Mooey, a discarded cow head with shopping cart wheels, a loyal co-collector and inventor.

Now Dawson's basement is filled with an assortment of trash, labelled and ready to be turned into treasures, each carefully purposed for the good of the world. His parents encourage his inventing because he's a one-man neighborhood beautification crew. No cast-off soda can has a chance of littering for long with Dawson and Mooey on the job down in his basement lab.

But like any kid, Dawson is less diligent about doing his regular chores--like picking up the stuff on the floor of his room. But for a super-inventor, that's NOT A PROBLEM. It's a scientific challenge.

"I REALLY NEED TO FIND A WAY TO GET MY CHORES DONE.

THIS WILL BE MY BEST INVENTION YET--THE VACUMANIAC!"

Dawson rummages through his pile of parts--an old vacuum cleaner, a bent watering can, a gumball machine, a piece of hose. Ah ha! He knows what to do!

"EUREKA!   IT SUCKS UP EVERYTHING...."

But in the best tradition of the runaway machine tale, the Vacumaniac doesn't stop. It sucks up and more and gets bigger and scarier as it threatens to vacuum up the whole town, in author-illustrator Chris Gall's latest extravaganza, Awesome Dawson (Little Brown, 2013).

Gall lavishes attention on his artwork, elaborate large-format, full-bleed pages meticulously crafted from engravings on an ink-covered clay board with digitally applied, eye-popping color, and a story told in comic-book style with panels, speech balloons, and a hilarious array of recyclables from which Dawson concocts his creations. A recycling superhero, in the style of Ellie Bethel's Michael Recycle series, is not new, but Awesome Dawson's clearly super absorption in contriving modern versions of the ever-popular Rube Goldberg apparatuses will appeal to the numerous gearheads among the primary set. Gall's awesome combination of clever cartooning and appealing text is perfect for kids who like their machines on the manic side. Booklist's reviewer says ". . . vibrant imagery that is both slick and homespun, like Dawson's own creations....Superheroes, recyclers, and inventors unite!"

Gall's other zany, kid-pleasing books include Dinotrux, Revenge of the Dinotrux, There's Nothing to Do on Mars, and Substitute Creacher, all reviewed here.