READ TO ME/OPINION
‘The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess’ By Tom Gauld (Neal Porter Books, Aug. 24, 2021), 4-8 years, 40 pages, $18.99 hardback, $11.99 ebook.
A classic fairytale problem opens this lovable picture book by one of the world’s wittiest cartoonists: The king and queen long for a child. One day, each decides to get one.
The king goes to the palace inventor, and she builds an intricate wooden boy, a robot; the queen visits a wise old witch, who enchants a log to create a princess. Instantly beloved, brother and sister are happy children, normal in every way that matters — except that the princess turns back into a log every time she goes to sleep.
Nobody knows her secret except her robot brother, who every morning speaks a charm that turns her into a girl.
He’s such a kind boy, he lets a family of beetles live in his gears.
But when one morning a circus arrives on the grounds, the brother runs to see them, leaving his sister sleeping like a log. In comes a clueless maid to pitch her out the window.
The robot rushes back to her bedroom just in time to see her rolling down a steep hill. While he’s running after her as hard as he can, she’s picked up by a wood-selling gnome and dumped into a massive pile of nonmagical logs on a barge headed far, far away. The robot begs his way aboard but cannot sort her out of the heap before the ship lands in The North — a dangerous place.
What follows is a beautiful tale of self-sacrifice as the brother exhausts himself trying to tote his log sister home. His epic is conveyed by one page of encounters too long to relate in the book, including: “The Giant’s Key,” “The Family of Robbers,” “The Old Lady in a Bottle,” “The Magic Pudding,” “The Lonely Bear,” “The Queen of the Mushrooms” …
I must stop reciting the whole plot, so just know that the sister eventually winds up toting her robot brother through epic encounters of her own, including “The Mischievous Pixies,” “The Enormous Blackbird,” “The Baby in a Rose Bush” …
After all that she’s so tired she falls asleep, and you know what happens when she falls asleep. Somewhere in a clearing in a forest there’s a log on the ground beside a handcart holding a broken robot.
Ah, but inside the robot, a family of beetles is beginning to wonder why everything is suddenly so still.
More adventure ensues until everyone can live happily ever after.
Apart from the tidy illustrations and satisfying story, adults will appreciate the conversations this book inspires, about the problems that might be caused by keeping a sibling’s secrets from parents versus the steadfast loyalty of siblings; the benefits of being kind to insects; whether animals really talk to one another; why an inventor couldn’t build a real boy …
I bought my own copy of this book, and if I lose it, I will buy another.
Read to Me is a weekly review of short books.