Boot is back with his loyal friends Rusty, Noke and Poochy. Boot sees a toy robot on the city street - a little pig called Mr Piggles. Boot follows Mr Piggles because he feels some connection to this odd broken down toy robot. After a crazy chase the friends find themselves in an inner city park. The park is a beautiful space, a refuge in the middle of the noisy and chaotic city. Boot remembers he has been to this park before with his original owner and friend Beth and her grandmother but this memory does not give Boot a warm and fuzzy feeling. He feels unwell. His tummy is upset. He feels angry and sad and utterly distressed but he does not know why. In the park he meets two very special human children and an interesting assortment of partially repaired toys. There is a unicorn called Killer, a dinosaur called Sprout, a huge bear called Slippers and Herman the hypno hamster. You can see Slippers, Boot and Noke in this illustration.
Publisher blurb: Boot was once a toy robot, but it has come a long way since it was scrapped and woke back up with only two-and-a-half glitchy memories. When Boot catches sight of a robot pet it used to know - Mr Piggles - our hero and pals follow it to a beautiful green square in the city of skyscrapers. Here they find not just real nature, but also a haven for broken and rejected pets. They also meet the children who look after the pets, and for whom this green space is a sanctuary too. But Boot is distracted by its emotions, swinging from happy to sad ... maybe Boot is broken? Can it work out what is wrong, with the help of its friends?
It is not often that I persist with a series but I adored Boot Small Robot Big Adventure (Book 1) and Boot - The Rusty Rescue (Book 2) so much that I was delighted to see this third instalment in a bookstore yesterday and even more delighted to read the whole book early this morning.
As with the first two books, you can read this third instalment on different levels. I really enjoyed the parallel commentary about consumerism; the distraction of gadgets and phones; our need for green space; urban development; the power of protesting; community action; and the importance of recognising our emotional responses to unfair or distressing situations. But of course this is also just a terrific story, a wild romp about teamwork, robots and good friends who help one another.
I highly recommend this whole series as an essential addition to every primary school library and that's not just because I do enjoy books about robots! Here is an audio sample from page 5 onwards.
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