Yet somehow it manages to find its way into many of the books he does. The most obvious example of this, prior to The Wild Robot, was his picture book Mr. nature, particularly as it relates to being “wild”. In his career, Brown has wrestled continually with the notion of civilization vs. Instead of trying to figure out how to fit in better with civilization, she spends the bulk of her time trying to figure out how to shed it like a skin. Smart of Brown then to stick with robots and animals.

The notion of going from “civilized” to “wild” carries the weight of all kinds of historical appropriations. But there is another kind of book this conjures up as well. Then they win over the local populace and must subsequently defend it against an incoming enemy or be protected by it. The stranger arrives and is shunned or actively opposed. Roz is precisely that and her story is familiar in a lot of ways. One of the best known is “a stranger comes to town”. They say that all good stories can be easily categorized into seven slots. And when Roz faces a threat from the outside, it’s her new friends and extended family that will come to her aid. After a while, though, she adopts a gosling she accidentally orphaned and together they learn, grow, and come to be invaluable members of the community. Learning the languages of the denizens of the forest, Roz is initially rebuffed (to put it mildly) by the animals living there. Roz is not a robot built for the outdoors, but part of her programming enables her to adapt. How she has gotten here, she doesn’t know, but it doesn’t take long for her to realize that she is in dire need of shelter and allies. Around her are the shattered remains of a good many other robots. She appears to be on an island in the sea. The first thing she is aware of is that she is bound in a crate by cords. In short, living many a city kid’s dream. Maybe so, but it’s also a pretty good book about shedding civilization and going wild. Folks say this book is like Hatchet or My Side of the Mountain. She’s a bit more interested in survival and then, after a bit of time, connection. The heroine of this book is mechanical but she’s not wrestling with the question of what it means to feel emotions or any of that. Maybe that’s why I liked Peter Brown’s The Wild Robot as much as I did. Take away the kid, put the robot on its own, and you have yourself some philosophy lite. Never you mind that a cool robot is basically a kid’s dream companion. You see this all the time in pop culture, so it stands to reason you’d see it a bit in children’s books too. Their sole purpose in any narrative is to explain what it is to be human. This is probably because, as a general rule, robots fall into the Data from Star Trek trap. There are far fewer robot middle grade books out there than you might expect.

Peter brown author of the wild robot