The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess, London cartoonist Tom Gauld's first picture book for kids, is a charming story about sibling loyalty featuring classic fairy-tale mainstays, including a king, a queen, a witch and a goblin. Despite his old-school cast, Gauld (Department of Mind-Blowing Theories) is committed to revising the fairy-tale script.
The story begins with an interracial royal couple lamenting their childlessness, after which the king asks the (female) royal inventor to create a child; meanwhile, the queen visits a witch in the woods for the same purpose. The inventor builds a wooden robot boy, the witch fashions a princess from a log, and the newfangled royal family is happy. There's a wrinkle, though: when the princess sleeps, she turns back into a log and can become a princess again only when someone says "Awake, little log, awake." Sure enough, the distracted robot neglects to wake his sister the morning a circus visits the castle, and when a maid spies a log in the princess's bed, she tosses it out the window. Upon learning what has happened, the robot boy goes to Augean lengths to find his sister. Readers who presume that the story will proceed as a one-sided rescue effort will be gleefully mistaken.
Drawn with pen and colored digitally, the art in The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess has the imprimatur of a practiced cartoonist: exacting characterizations, sure-handed hatching and tidy layouts. The book also has a happy ending--the lone fairy-tale convention to which Gauld surrenders completely. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author