Robomop
Stuck with the apparently endless job of cleaning a basement bathroom, a retro-looking robot dreams of fresh air and making friends. As the harmless cousin to Robocop, Robomop also has a mind of his own, but his escape attempts are continually foiled by his own unwieldy machinery. He tries, for instance, to hide in a very large duffel bag and plunges in headfirst. But as one of Rodriguez’s diverting woodcut illustrations reveals, Robomop’s body and long, coiled neck don’t even fit into the bag. (Robomop also ends up upside down in a toilet as a result of getting overly excited about a new female-looking robot.) Taylor touches on the sadness of obsolescence (Robomop gets thrown away instead of fixed after he pretends to be broken) and layoffs (the human window-cleaner also gets replaced by the new robot model) but offers up a happy ending that involves friendship, love, and, well, honky-tonk music. Grades K-2, --Abby Nolan