The Take-0ff! See Otto by David Milgrim

SEE OTTO GO!

Otto is the cutest litte robot you ever saw. He's brave, too, as he waves goodbye to Mom and Pop Robot and enters his spaceship heading for an earth landing.

Right on the plan, Otto steers his little rocket expertly past rocky asteroids, small planets, orbiting satellites, and assorted space junk, until he spots a likely looking planet which looks a lot like Earth. So far its A-OK!

But Otto hasn't had much training in what to do next, and he finds himself out of gas and ... falling, falling, falling, into a crash landing (BOINK!) on his head in some jungle, to the surprise of the bemused monkey population--not to mention a rather hostile hippopotamus who finds him dazed and confused, a stranger in a strange land!

Otto knows what to do when confronted by strange life forms. He gives them his biggest smile. But the natives are not friendly. The hippopotamus is faster than he looks, and he also knows what to do with that horn on his nose.

RUN, OTTO, RUN!

But Otto is not fast enough, and the hippo sends him flying, not into space, but into a tree with two surprised monkeys.

LAUGH, EVERYONE!

It's back to the old drawing board for Otto, or, in this case, back to the old typewriter for author David Milgrim, in his Ready-to-Read book, See Otto (READY-TO-READ PRE-LEVEL 1) (Simon Spotlight Ready to Read).

As the main character in a winner of the American Library Association's Theodor Seuss Geisel Award, this beginner book, with its charming little astronaut has all the right stuff--limited vocabulary, repetition, and funny, irresistible characters for the t novice reader. Keep smiling, Otto. You've got what it takes for lift-off for rookie readers! And there are many more Otto titles waiting for early readers!

Malfunction!! Gurple and Preen: A Broken Crayon Cosmic Adventure by Linda Sue Park

Gurple's eyes opened, one by one by one. Her head swiveled as she clanked to her feet. PREEN! WHERE ARE YOU?

Robots Gurple and Preen have certainly suffered a major spacecraft disaster--crashed on a mystery planet with nothing in sight but boxes of crayons!

But their reactions could not be more different.

Gurple goes deep six. It's a catastrophe. In her anxiety she vents her anxiety by breaking crayons in half--with unexpected results. A blue-checked tablecloth appears! What is Gurple supposed to do with that!

"ZAP MY APPS! THE PODS! WE'RE DOOMED WITHOUT THEM!"

But the resourceful little robot Preen sets about restoring their spaceship with whatever is available. She tears the tablecloth into strips and starts tying the crayons into bundles. And when Gurple breaks a brown crayon in frustration and a flock of quails emerge, Preen puts them to work ferrying the crayon bundles to the wrecked spaceship. A broken green crayon becomes a lampshade, but...

Gurple finally freaks out when she breaks a white crayon and it turns into a roll of toilet paper!

ROBOTS DON'T GO TO THE BATHROOM! SHE SHOUTS.

And when a black crayon becomes a panda, Preen finds a way to use them all to jerry-rig a working spacecraft.

"NODES AND CODES!" CRIES GURPLE. "PLEASE LET THIS WORK!"

A cadre of crayoned kid commandoes appears to finish the job, and there is a successful liftoff. Mission accomplished! The Commander asks Preen how she made this ingenious repair.

“STEP BY STEP BY STEP!” SHE SAYS.

And whose hand is behind all this crayoned deep space drama?

The final page reveals the author of this fantastic space opera, a creative young girl in her bedroom, hopefully sky-gazing toward the full moon in her window, in the Newberry-winning author Linda Sue Park's latest picture book, Gurple and Preen: A Broken Crayon Cosmic Adventure (Simon & Schuster, 2020). In a salute to the inventive mind, but also to the frugal "use what you've got" wisdom, this fanciful toy story is a treat for young space robot fans. With the noted Debbie Ridpath Ohi's playful and inspired illustrations along for the flight, it's a storybook space voyage to remember. A clever nod to imagination and ingenuity." says Booklist.

Cyborg Ballhog: Soccer Shocker! (Project Droid #2) by Nancy Krulik and Amanda Burwasser

"I hate Fiber Flakes," I called down to Mom. "Isn't there anything sweet for breakfast?"

"Logan, I'm busy!" my mother called from her lab. "Just add some dates and nuts to your cereal."

"I can do it!" shouted Java. He grabbed the scissors and began cutting up the calendar on the wall.

"What are you doing!" I shouted

"Getting dates for your cereal," Java said. "Here's November 17." He dropped the calendar dates into my cereal bowl.

It's not easy having a robot around, especially when you have to keep your classmates believing that he's just an ordinary third grader. But Java (James Alexander Victor Applebaum) is an android, the subject of Logan's mom's Project Droid, and now she's testing her soccer programming by signing Java up for Logan's team, the Purple Wombats. After having to cover up for the mess Java made of the class science fair, Logan is tired of trying to keep the other kids from noticing that Java is NOT human. And besides, Logan is the top scorer on the team (he scored their one point against the Lemon Yellow Lemurs, current holders of he worst team in the league title). Still, Mom is set on testing her coding, and maybe Java can help them beat the class bullies, Sherry and Jerry Silverspoon, and their team the Red Polar Bears.

And does he ever! When Java comes in to sub for Stanley, he dazzles the Bears with his lightning moves.

What was he doing?

I heard the ball whack Java in the butt.

I watched the ball soar right over the heads of the Red Polar Bears! The ball slammed Jerry Silverspoon right in the stomach... and rolled right into the net.

The game is a blowout, with Java scoring 67 goals. Logan loves seeing the Silverspoon twins go down in defeat, but he's also miffed with Java for hogging the ball throughout the whole game. He begins to think of a way to get even.

But when the toilet floods the bathroom and Java's battery is waterlogged, Logan realizes that he's the one who must take over the scoring in the big game with the Orange Tree Frogs. Is there any way he can do what Java does?

In the second book in their Project Droid series, Nancy Krulik and Amanda Burwasser give Logan his shot at showing how a real soccer star passes the ball, heroically giving his day-dreamy friend Stanley the chance to score the winning point, in Soccer Shocker!: Project Droid 2 (Sky Pony Press, 2016). In addition to a bit of gameplay fun, the authors put in a plug for fair play and telling the truth, except of course, when it comes to revealing the truth of Java's true identity.

Fans of Peggy and Herman Parish's Amelia Bedelia (I Can Read Book) series will find the similarly pun-puzzled and idiom-befuddled Java, who puts calendar dates and metal nuts in cereal and gives Logan the cold shoulder by dumping the team's ice water bucket over his head, a good source of giggles along the way. Illustrator Mike Moran's cartoons drive home the humor with his silly illustrations, such as Java's proffered, protein-packed peanut butter and jellyfish sandwiches as halftime snacks for the hapless horrified and gagging Wombats.

"Funny enough to keep fledgling readers turning pages," says Kirkus Reviews.

Fair Advantage? Science No Fair! by Nancy Krulik and Amanda Burwasser

"Logan! I've got a surprise for you!"

My mom is an inventor. There's always some sort of surprise in her lab.

"Come on!" Mom said. "You've been asking for this since you were little!" Mom smiled really wide.

"A brother?" I shouted.

But there's no sign of a baby--no crib, no diapers--in Mom's lab. Logan looks under and behind all the science paraphernalia in the lab.

Then I saw the kid. He was staring at me.

"What's your name?" I asked. The kid didn't answer.

"Give him a few minutes," Mom said. "He's still charging."

Logan had wanted a little brother, not a cyborg. But a robot "cousin" could be pretty cool, too, he thinks--until he has to take his "cousin" Java to school and introduce him to his classmates. Right away, Java attracts the attention of the Silverstone twins, Logan's frienenemies. Java is really good at a lot of things, like math and tetherball, but ordinary idioms seem to short-circuit his brain.

"We have a extra desk in the front row," the teacher told Java. "Please take that seat."

Java walked over to the desk and picked it up . "Where would you like me to take it?" he asked.

And keeping his robot nature secret only gets harder when the teacher asks Java to work with Sherry and Jerry Silverstone on their science fair project. Logan is torn between trying to keep Java from doing something to give away his identity and working with his buddy Stanley on their own project, a potato battery.

Jerry manages to sabotage their first model, pretending to lose control of a water balloon and shorting out the potato, but that is nothing like the disaster at the actual fair when his friend Nadine is demonstrating her big electromagnet. Java gets too close and suddenly his circuits start fritzing out. At first he only spouts random, strange facts, to the amazement of the kids and their parents.

"Hairy spiders make milk. Cats cannot taste sweets. The longest toenail is...."

Suddenly smoke blasted out of Java's mouth. Steam blasted from his rear end!

"MOM!" I shouted. "HELP!"

Sometimes having a brilliant inventor for a mom is a mixed blessing, in Nancy Krulik and Amanda Burwasser's Science No Fair!: Project Droid 1 (Sky Pony Press, 2016). Kids will love fantasizing about having a robot buddy, er, cousin, and despite his slight meltdown at the science fair, Java comes through to embarrass the evil twins and make this the most exciting third-grade science fair ever. His cyborg secret is safe for the moment, but the Silverstones vow revenge, and it looks like there are more science fiction-ish shenanigans ahead in the Project Droid series to keep beginning chapter readers coming back for more android adventures. Mike Moran provides black-and-white comic cartoons that add action and visual humor to most of the pages in these easy-reading stories with short chapters, large print, and fast-developing plots that will entice even reluctant readers.

Power Down--Please! Beep! Beep! Go to Sleep! by Todd Tarpley

THREE LITTLE ROBOTS, TIME FOR BED.

TIME TO DIM YOUR INFRARED.

A sleepy boy, already in his stripey PJs, leads his three robots toward their beds. But first, there's the nighttime ritual to get through.  They brush their rotors, shower, and, ahem! take care of toileting, making a mechanical mess along the way. The toothpaste extrudes all over the place, the sink overflows, the toilet paper unfurls all over the tiles, and the shower splashes over the rim of the tub.

The boy is clearly weary, but he piggy-backs one little robot, with the other two seemingly sleepy cyborgs behind him, toward his room, where he beds down the three.

QUIET AT LAST, NOT A PEEP.

Or not. One robot turns on the light, and they all have a complaint! One misses his coil. Another holds out his cup for a drink of oil. The last claims his sensor hurts.

The tired boy tugs his toolbox out from under his bed and takes care of their complaints, and they all settle down, or so it seems. But then...

BEEP! BEEP!

One robot waves his Saturn night light. The other two complain about a too-loose belt and a too-tight bolt. The boy sleepwalks through the various fixes. And then they three trundle back to their triple-decker steel bunk beds.  The yawning boy clambers back under his blanket.

Peace at last?

BEEP!

Apparently, all the robots' circuits are still firing, their gears grinding. The boy delivers an ultimatum!

NO MORE BLIPPING!
BLINKING-BOINKING!
WINKING-WHIRRING!
SQUINKING-OINKING!

OINKING?

They're adjusted, given oil, offered nightlights and a coil. What else would a robot want?

Oh.

A BEDTIME STORY.

It's a cyber goodnight at last, in Todd Tarpley's Beep! Beep! Go to Sleep! (Little, Brown and Company, 2015), a rhyming story in which Tarpley turns the tables on the kid, giving weary parents a chance to see the bedtime shoe on the other foot. But the robots get the last whirr and wink, because it's the boy who falls asleep first, as the whole cast of characters snuggle down for a bit of co-sleeping in the boy's bed.

Caldecott-Honor artist John Rocco (for Blizzard) struts his stuff in ink-line, watercolor, and digital illustrations that are long on wit, satire, and charm. His boy plays a little grownup, tired and with his patience wearing thin as his electronic charges pull out all the usual sleep-avoiding tricks. Visual humor abounds, a robot on the toilet wound in toilet paper, and a mouse along as observer, soaping his armpits in the bathtime spillage, trudging off to the bedroom in his little fuzzy bathrobe, trying to sleep through the whining and beeping, and at last sacking out on the boys' bed with the rest of the guys. Humor, wordplay, and a clever comic consciousness gives these sleepytime resisters quite a cachet for the story circle set.

Cyber-Saucy! Robo-Sauce by Adam Rubin

[WARNING! THIS BOOK TURNS INTO A ROBOT!]

Naw! That couldn't happen. But if a cool robot costume lets a kid get into the persona of a robot, well, go for it!

Grown-ups have no idea how much fun it can be to play like you are a robot! So how can they even imagine how much fun it would be to BE a robot!

ROBO-POKE! ROBO-GRAB! ROBO-STOMP!

EVERYONE WOULD WANT TO BE A ROBOT!

What if there was robot machine that processed kids into robots? Or even better--

ROBO-SAUCE?

It's no taste treat, but if you pour on just enough, well--ZAP! you will become a GIANT ROBOT!

Now it's time for Rampaging Robots! What if even your parents can become robots? Your dog? Everyone?

The robots take over the story, and then in a gatefold that just keeps on keeping on, the robots take over the book itself, in Adam Rubin's Robo-Sauce (Dial Books, 2015), in which a many-faceted gatefold opens up and can be refolded into a new cover for a book which even can be "read" backwards. And why not? Daniel Palmieri's illustrations are up to the challenge and his (and his readers') imaginations are extended in novel ways to there and back again. "Is there an award for best gatefold ever? Then tell Rubin and Salmieri to get out their tuxes, because this book has the one to beat," says Kirkus Review.