Mama Robot

Mama Robot by Davide Cali
Illustrations by Anna Laura Cantone
Translated from Italian by Marcel Danesi
Voglio una mama-robot
2008

     His mom is always busy. Everyday he comes back from school to find the same note on the dinner table telling him to eat, brush his teeth, do his homework and clean his room. Boring! So he has a plan: he will build himself a Mama Robot. Mama Robot will never be busy and she will always have time for him. She'll protect him from scary dogs and bullies, she will cook only his favorite foods and never make "boiled cabbage, boiled fish, boiled chicken." Mama Robot will do his homework, let him stay up late to watch scary movies, and best of all "she will never yell at me" and she will "never be too busy to spend time with me." But, there is a problem, "how do you hug a robot mom?"
     Mama Robot is a delightful book. It's text flows with ease and the capitalization of specific words makes it easy to read aloud with the intended emphasis. The illustrations are fairly quirky and I loved the change in orientation that makes you have to flip the book in order to see some of the images. Mama Robot is great, but you still need a mom that knows how to cuddle.