Runaway Robot

Product Information

Frank's imagining of this futuristic world where pizza ovens deliver your pizza and driverless buses is really brilliant. As with Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s other books, a comical façade drives a crazy plot but just below the surface is a poignant and touching human story.

Runaway Robot - Book Reviews

In this slightly futuristic England with little self-driving robots delivering pizza, Alfie learns that he can’t do everything by himself, and it’s okay to need help. There in lost property he finds Eric - a one legged six foot robot, a leg - but not at the same time, but then loses his own prosthetic hand. They make a charming pair as together they tryy to remember how they each lost their missing body part!When one day his presence is challenged it leads to an encounter with Eric, a giant one-legged robot in need of a friend. but I didn’t know what, the author had place the tiniest amount of intrigue that sparked my interest but it soon fizzled out. Alfie is a BAME amputee - a much under-represented people in children’s literature and the supporting characters are also child amputees who are the victims of war (this ties in nicely as these children have all been fitted with next-gen prosthetic limbs from the Limb Lab).

The runaway robot: how one smart vacuum cleaner made a break

Past winners include my childhood heroes - Alan Garner, Leon Garfield, Joan Aiken - and contemporary heroes like Mark Haddon, Geraldine McCaughrean and Meg Rosoff. Misunderstanding and mayhem, certainly - but also plenty of laugh-out-loud moments and some unexpected consequences. As well as being funny, there are some emotional moments, and I particularly liked the development of the plot as the book neared its conclusion.That is, unless this was nothing but the latest doomed-to-failure reconnaissance mission designed to help enhance the collective robot vacuum cleaner knowledge of how to dethrone humanity. Frank's second novel, Framed, was published in September 2005 and shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, the Whitbread Award and the Guardian Prize.