Robomop

December 10, 2012
Taylor (Huck Runs Amuck!) tells a
poignant story, but featherlight humor keeps it free of sentimentality. Robomop, an automatic cleaning robot with the looks of William Joyce’s Rolie Polie Olie and a long-suffering personality not unlike that of C-3PO, is consigned to a basement lavatory, and he wants out—but he can’t climb stairs. He yearns to “see the world, feel the sunshine, and fall in love,” but his escape attempts are unsuccessful and what looks like an exciting development—the appearance of a lovely “bio-morphic bellebot cleanerette”—leads instead to unemployment. Rodriguez (Sergio Makes a Splash) combines midcentury nostalgia with gentle mechanical comedy in his woodblock prints. Working in sun-bleached oranges and greens, he gives Robomop the charm of Chaplin’s Little Tramp as the robot dances “a small honky-tonk dance every time somebody arrived” in the hope that they’ll sell him to the circus. Nothing goes according to plan, but Robomop finds happiness in a quieter way. This one should hit the top of many bedtime stacks. Ages 5–8. Agent: Celia Catchpole. Illustrator’s agent: Holly McGhee, Pippin Properties.

January 15, 2013
A lonely robot finds friends in this overworked tale. Robomop is a diligent worker, yet he yearns to leave his job cleaning the basement bathroom. After several failed escape attempts, he becomes depressed until a new BIO-MORPHIC BELLEBOT CLEANERETTE arrives. So excited by the possibility of a friend, Robomop falls into the toilet and is trashed. Coincidentally, the window cleaner's services are also rendered useless by the new cleanerette's technology, so the human takes Robomop home to his family. All benefit: The house is clean, and Robomop finds companionship (even kindling a romance with the vacuum). Unfortunately, both text and illustrations labor to be humorous. First-person narration makes readers Robomop's confidantes, but third-person may have made him more sympathetic. Rodriguez's hand-printed aesthetic--a combination of woodblocked ink and digital media--recreate the idealistic vision of the future presented in WPA work. His Robomop is a Rolie Polie Olie of the 1950s done in a limited, mostly pastel palette. But for all the attractive colors and interesting shapework and printing style, some of the illustrations are lacking--perhaps because the most visually appealing elements are the people and lettering, rather than the robots. Miscasting results in a missed mark. (Picture book. 3-6)

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March 1, 2013

PreS-Gr 3-"Washing, sloshing, rubbing, scrubbing."..Robomop is good at his job cleaning the bathroom in the basement. However, with no friends or fresh air, what he really wants to do is escape. He comes up with a brilliant plan, but his attempt is thwarted and Robomop seems destined to clean the bathroom forever. Things start looking up for him when a friendly window cleaner joins the crew and the two bond over honky-tonk music. But with visits being just once a month, Robomop is still lonely and dreams of seeing the world. To make matters worse, he discovers that he is being replaced by a brand new, state-of-the-art cleaning robot and is thrown away. Discouraged and dejected, he almost gives up hope, but realizes that this may just be the best thing that could have happened to him. This humorous story shows that everyone has a place in the world and should never give up. The illustrations are reminiscent of vintage picture books and brightly fill each page. The art was created with oil-based woodblock ink and digital media in a palette of five or six colors. A unique addition.-Amy Shepherd, St. Anne's Episcopal School, Middleton, DE

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2013
Grades K-2 Stuck with the apparently endless job of cleaning a basement bathroom, a retro-looking robot dreams of fresh air and making friends. As the harmless cousin to Robocop, Robomop also has a mind of his own, but his escape attempts are continually foiled by his own unwieldy machinery. He tries, for instance, to hide in a very large duffel bag and plunges in headfirst. But as one of Rodriguez's diverting woodcut illustrations reveals, Robomop's body and long, coiled neck don't even fit into the bag. (Robomop also ends up upside down in a toilet as a result of getting overly excited about a new female-looking robot.) Taylor touches on the sadness of obsolescence (Robomop gets thrown away instead of fixed after he pretends to be broken) and layoffs (the human window-cleaner also gets replaced by the new robot model) but offers up a happy ending that involves friendship, love, and, well, honky-tonk music.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)