BEAST BOT

Still mourning his beloved grandfather, a young inventor works to perfect his robot beast in this children’s book.

Elliott, whose father left when he was a baby, has always had a special connection with his grandfather. A retired architect, Granddad is skilled at the entire process of imagining, designing, and building creations in his garage workshop, and his grandson loves learning from him. “Although some people called him ‘eccentric’ or ‘weird,’ I called him a visionary,” says Elliott. The two also love wrestling together and playing a verbal game with compound words: “Meat and ball!” “Hot and dog!” The boy is devastated and lonely when his grandfather dies in the spring, leaving him and his mother alone. A deep gloom—Dark— urges Elliott to give up, but as Halloween approaches, he gets an idea: build a robot beast, the Beast Bot, using what Granddad taught him. When Elliott takes his creation to school, it falls apart, kids laugh at him, and again Dark tells him to quit. Nevertheless, the boy remembers his grandfather’s advice to learn from mistakes. This time, Elliott perfects the Beast Bot, winning him new friends and happiness; Light conquers Dark. In her third children’s book, Stanton helps kids understand grief and recovery through effective metaphors, personified by Light and Dark. Similarly, the word game reflects Elliott’s mood; depressed, he thinks of pairs like “Heart and ache,” but working on Beast Bot yields “Day and dream,” “Sun and shine.” The tale also reassures kids that even when individuals are gone, they live on in memory. Illustrating his second novel by Stanton, Pantuso provides scribbly monochrome drawings that capture the story’s moods, from quirky fun to ominous darkness.

A poignant tale of creativity’s power to provide resilience.