Pouli, the narrator, is a bird (born 350 BCE) who also happens to be the first machine that flew in the sky. Pouli takes readers through a chronological progression of the history of robots and drones. As someone who is very new to the world of robots and drones, I appreciated the real-life comparisons made throughout this story to help the reader better understand how robots are everywhere within our lives. I'll admit that I never considered my coffee pot a robot until I read this book! In order to help readers understand the differences between robots and non-robots (remote control cars, humans, computers, simple machines), the author and illustrator used visuals and vocabulary to help describe the subtle, yet important, differences between the two.
Given that I have no background knowledge about robots and drones, I would have been completely lost if it weren't for the engaging visuals used to describe the vocabulary throughout this book. My favorite example of how visuals helped me understand a concept was on page 71 when describing the difference between resistors and conductors:
In addition to the vocabulary, the author and illustrator did an amazing job making this book enticing to all readers. I would recommend this book to any reader who has a budding interest in robots and drones. The fact that the illustrator was purposeful in incorporating diverse characters, as shown on page 67, was something that I noted multiple times while reading this book.
As a teacher, I couldn't help but think about how I could use this book to inspire argumentative writing topics. Near the end of the book, there were many ethical and hypothetical questions asked relating to the future developments of robots and drones. These questions could be used to help students deeper investigate arguments for or against the advanced developments of robots and drones.
If you have readers that will enjoy this book, they might also enjoy these titles:
- The Secret Coders (Books 1-5) by Gene Luen Yang and Mike Holmes
- Science Comics: Flying Machines by Alison Wilgus and Molly Brooks
- Wires and Nerve (Vol. 1 and Vol. 2) by Marissa Meyer and Stephen Gilpin
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