In this rollicking remake of the classic tale, an inventor cobbles together a robot to clean his cluttered workshop, then incautiously leaves the schematics where his new ``apprentice'' can find them. Setting the inventor's lab in a seedy industrial neighborhood, Dewan (Top Secret, p. 140, etc.) festoons it with enticing junk that hovers right on the edge of recognizability, paying tribute to Dukas's century-old scherzo with backgrounds of intertwined electronic diagrams and musical notations. About to be vacuumed into components by a menacing rank of near-clones, the stubby apprentice, resembling nothing so much as an old canister-style Hoover, is rescued by its maker with a mighty blast of electricity, then affectionately led off for a ``nice hot cup of oil.'' It's a memorable take, capped by a rousing robot cheer: ``1, 2, 4, 8, We were made to duplicate.'' (Picture book. 5-8)
