THE TROUBLE WITH SISTERS AND ROBOTS

Nothing gets up young Kyle’s nose like his irksome, tag-along of a sister, Lizzy. Everywhere he goes, there she is, beaming. If she won’t scram, then she’d better “Be quiet, Lizzy!” But when Kyle unearths an old robot head in the backyard, then retrofits it to become Rusteye and the robot runs amok, turning everything it touches to polished steel—including their family—she saves his bacon with some simple advice he finally agrees to hear. Even if it’s nice for siblings to find common humanity, this story is thin gruel. Most readers in this range would probably rather learn the meaning of Rusteye’s metal-making power than the dynamics of brother-sister harmony, but they won’t get it, nor why all the metal melts once Rusteye is brought to heel, nor what it feels like to be turned into metal. The metal angle serves to let Gritton tinker with the textures of computer-generated artwork, which runs from a waxy gray to an undulating, gleaming zinc, setting Kyle and Lizzy’s primary-color wardrobe alight. But still, wouldn’t it be fun to know what steel eyes see? (Picture book. 5-8)