Celia’s Robot
Margaret Chang
Holiday House, 2009
$16.95, Hardcover
978-0823421817
March 17th, 2012
Genre:
Realistic, Science Fiction
Age: 9+
Description:
Ten-year-old Celia’s got some problems. She gets teased at school for being the
only Asian-looking kid in her town. Her mom, a traveling cellist, and her dad,
a brilliant but busy scientist, are arguing a lot, and she’s finding fifth
grade to be a disaster. It all changes when her dad presents her with a robot
for her birthday. The robot is a prototype he built for Celia to help her
manage her chaotic life (messy room, homework troubles) but it is also a
prototype for a new robotic vision system he’s working on and a new robotic program
for interactivity. Robot can actually learn from Celia. While bossy at first,
Celia comes to think of Robot as a friend too, especially when her parents
leave her alone most of the time. When her dad gets talked into bring Robot to
school for a unit on computers and robotics, he agrees and Robot ends up in the
local newspaper. Celia is worried since her dad has adamantly said no one must
know about it because of some major competition to his company. One day, months
after her birthday, Celia returns home to an empty house during early dismal
due to a major snow storm only to find the electricity is down and Robot is
missing. With both parents out of town because of work, Celia teams up with the
annoying Tim who, in his jealously, told Fisher, her dad’s main competitor,
about the robot. Can they track it down and rescue it before her dad’s work is
permanently gone?
Opinion:
This is an alright book. It is fun to watch Celia interact with her robot and
grow to love it and teach it new things. Her dad does tend to go over the deep
end a bit on protecting it and fails to realize that Celia has his brains to
work with such technology and he could actually be putting that to use by
teaching her about his job and allowing her to have hands on experience.
Unfortunately, when Robot is kidnapped the story goes a bit into inconceivable
land as the two ten-year-old kids in the middle of a massive snow storm which
has caused the whole town to shut down get on the one working bus which takes
them to a train station where they go to Boston, find the building where
Fisher’s corporation is located, brake in, and get caught. It’s a little too
much for suspension of disbelief—they are 10! The story ends happily with
everyone reunited and Celia and Tim get to help her dad repair Robot, which
Celia decides to give to Tim because he needs Robot more than she does.
No comments:
Post a Comment