Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A battered humanoid robot wakes up amid a vast, rust-colored wasteland of rubbish and discarded technology in this heavily Toy Story- and WALL-E-inflected picture book by Todd-Stanton (The Comet). To determine how it arrived there, the robot enters an adjacent futuristic city, triggering a series of memories. The white figure recalls once being gifted to a pale-skinned, dark-haired human child--multiple frames show their joyful days together--and even finds the family before realizing that it's been replaced with a newer model. Heartbroken, the damaged robot resigns itself to the rubbish heap, but two pale-skinned human scavengers--a mother who wears an eye patch and her daughter--rescue it, whisking the protagonist to their decidedly unfuturistic home in an idyllic mountain valley. They lovingly rejuvenate the robot, using a mélange of jubilant hues and helping it to understand that "even the most broken things can always be saved." Themes of consumerism, obsolescence, and redemption are grounded in genuine emotion throughout this cinematically rendered picture book about finding one's people and one's place in the world. Ages 3--5. (Mar.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A story of home lost and found. The protagonist at the center of this tale isn't so much lost as rejected. Abandoned and broken in a futuristic world's dump, the robot doesn't know where it came from, but it knows it doesn't belong here. Setting out on a quest, it passes a woman wearing an eyepatch, a baby on her back, sorting through rubbish. These human characters, rendered in mangalike style, initially go unmentioned in the text but will play a crucial role at book's end. First, however, the robot spies a billboard advertising a similar robot as a child's "new best friend!" This sight sparks memories of when the robot was given to a boy, and panel illustrations depict the pair playing together affectionately. Visual clues soon reveal that the robot was discarded when the boy's parents gave their son an updated version, a fate confirmed when our protagonist sees the boy with his new robot and then returns to the dump. Much time has passed; the baby seen earlier is now a child who finds the robot and claims it. A heartwarming ending--away from the dump, at the mother and child's rustic home--uses expressive color to depict the love and joy of found family; Todd-Stanton balances text and art effectively, trusting readers to make connections as they pick up on hints in the images. Human characters vary in skin tone. A tale worth finding--and cherishing.(Picture book. 3-7) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
