TIME TO RECHARGE, HARPER!

A busy bot needs to recharge.

Harper is a little robot with a serious case of FOMO who resists recharging at school. Miller creates a classroom setting complete with rest mats in pastel-colored cartoons, and when all of the other little bots lie down on their mats and plug themselves in to recharge, Harper unplugs and dashes off to play. The resulting lack of charging ends up making Harper’s battery run low, to humorous effect. The increasingly sluggish Harper has mishaps and mix-ups—feeding the canvas and painting the fish, dozing off while trying to keep up with others, and so on—all while continuing to refuse to recharge. Amusingly, Harper’s classmates join their teacher with their own pleas and remonstrations, and readers see a crabby Harper surrounded by exclamation-point–laden speech balloons. Harper’s refusal culminates in a fit worthy of Mo Willems’ Pigeon in which the bot appears in front of a red background, yelling, “I DON’T NEED TO CHARGE!” But finally, Harper relents, the teacher tucks and plugs the little bot in, and Harper finally recharges. Lo and behold, when Harper is fully charged, it’s cleanup time, and Harper decides a little more recharging time may be in order after all. Readers will enjoy taking in this technological twist on a familiar setting and marvel at all the differences displayed in bot construction. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Reading fun for robot fans and naptime naysayers alike, with a sly wink at the end.