Robots Rule!: The Junkyard Bot by C.J Richards is a juvenile fiction book that is all about robots.
Terabyte Heights is a town that is all-but completely run by robots. Robots clean your house, cook your food, they basically take care of everyone’s physical needs. Robots may keep the town running but for ten-year-old George Gearing, Jackbot is his best (only) friend. That is, until he is hit by a car and broken into a ton of pieces.
The girl who hit Jackbot feels bad, so she takes George to her father’s lab to fix the robot. TinkerTech Laboratories has everything George could ever want and he is like a kid in a candy store. When he fixes Jackbot, he does a really, really good job. So good in fact, that the evil Dr. Micron wants to take the technology for himself.
Will George be able to protect Jackbot or will his technology be used for evil?
I picked up this one thinking it might be a good choice for my STEM book club and it might, but it almost seemed a little too easy for my crew. I don’t want to pick hard books but I do want them to be challenged. This one was such a quick read, I’d probably even recommend it for 3-5 grade instead of 4-6.
That being said, it was a quick read. It could definitely be a confidence booster for struggling readings. It has robots and inventions, an evil villain, kids saving the day, all fun things for juvenile readers.
George is a super likable character. He is an orphan, hard working, inventive and has a pretty good nose for right and wrong. There’s also this school yard dynamic between the popular girl and the poor kid, that seems very familiar.
This was a fine read, just not quite what I was looking for. It gets 3.5 stars from me.
That’s all for now!
-M-