The Lost Robot
Joe Todd-Stanton
Flying Eye Books

Not so much lost as deposited in a rubbish dump has been the fate of the broken robot at the heart of this story. Said robot has no idea from where it came but knows that it doesn’t belong on the dump so it starts walking. On its journey it passes a woman wearing an eye-patch; she has a baby on her back and is sorting through rubbish. Continuing on its way, the robot goes through a hole in a wall, on the other side of which are lots of people. This reminds the robot that it once had a person too but it wasn’t any of these. Then up on a billboard, it notices a robot not unlike itself and it’s advertised as ‘Your new best friend’. Seeing this initiates a memory of when the robot was given to a boy as a present and the exciting things the two did together.

But then the robot recalls a less pleasant memory: the boy’s parents gave their son an updated version of the robot. Now the protagonist is determined to find its friend but would he recognise his old robot? Perhaps a quick fix might help?

After a long, long walk the robot reaches a house that it remembers; however something is different. Inside, the boy is having fun with one of the new robots. Telling himself he had woken up right where he was supposed to be, back goes the little robot to the piles of rubbish where it falls fast asleep. When it wakes up, several years have passed: the baby seen on its mother’s back is now a little girl; she notices the robot, claims it and she and her mother drive the long distance to their home where they transform their find into a colourful robot full of love and joy, just like its new family.

A wonderful fable of renovations and restoration wherein Joe Todd-Stanton provides lots of visual cues in his illustrations so that readers can make connections as the story unfolds. This is a treasure of a book to seek out and return to over and over.