How could I resist? I immediately added the book to my reading roster… and oh my goodness. Imagine my surprise and delight, then, when I received this beautiful, trim paperback in the mail, with a blurb promising some thought-provoking discussion of robots v. The Wild Robot is the debut middle grade novel from award-winning and best-selling picture book author-illustrator Peter Brown–someone whose work I had seen before, but hadn’t ever had much reason to engage with in the past. Roz must make the hardest choice of her entire life–with the lives of her family, friends, and the island itself hanging in the balance. For Roz is from a different world–one of cities and smoke and robots performing all kinds of acts and tasks under humans–and sometimes the past refuses to go unheard.

Roz learns to think, to adapt, and to love.īut one day all of that changes. She learns to become a mother to an orphaned gosling, and a friend to the many woodland creatures who inhabit the wild. She learns to adapt herself to the island conditions and survive. Over time, Roz learns to speak the language of wild things. But even though Roz can communicate and speak, her language isn’t known or understood by the wild island creatures–worse, Roz seems to frighten them. The island is a place of wonder and life–she sees crabs and foxes, bears and moose, geese and beavers as she makes her way from the rocky shore to the wooded lands beyond. All the other robots, who were packed tightly in crates and boxes on the same ship as Roz, were smashed on the island’s rocky shore.Įxcept… Roz isn’t actually alone. What Roz does know is this: she is on an island surrounded by ocean as far as the eye can see. More importantly, Roz has no idea where she is or why she exists at all. She does not know where she is from, or what her purpose is. How did I get this book: Review Copy from the Publisher Until one day, the robot’s mysterious past comes back to haunt her…. When she tries to care for an orphaned gosling, the other animals finally decide to help, and the island starts to feel like home. Why is she there? Where did she come from? And, most important, how will she survive in her harsh surroundings? Roz’s only hope is to learn from the island’s hostile animal inhabitants. When robot Roz opens her eyes for the first time, she discovers that she is alone on a remote, wild island. Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Genre: Middle Grade, Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction A surprising parable about technology, nature, and free will, The Wild Robot by Peter Brown is beautiful, at turns heartbreaking, and deeply profound.

The wild robot online