Robots: Watch Out, Water About!

PreS-Gr 2—A short rhyming tale about rusty robots sets up some impressive pop-up scenes. In the slight story, translated from the French, rain damages robots and the "iron doctor" arrives to repair them. The rhymes are mediocre and there's no real story beyond the base idea of robots in need of repair, but the pop-ups are the highlight here. Each page turn produces an impressive bit of paper movement. The seven full-page pop-ups feature clean cuts and angles that reflect the robot theme nicely. There's good variation of movement, from a vertical array of seven rusting robots to a group of gears that neatly rotate as the page opens and closes. The impressive final scene features a happy robot, now rust-free, extending straight up from the flat page. Most cuts are wide and straight, making the book slightly sturdier than the average pop-up.