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I think I first fell in love with robots after watching The Iron Giant on VHS as a kid. That movie still stands the test of time as one of my favorites. The story of a robot with a soul who becomes a lonely kid’s best friend fills me up in a way that’s hard to put into words. I even chose a line from that movie as my senior high school yearbook quote, “You are who you choose to be.” There’s incredible humor and heart in The Iron Giant, and the same can be said for both the book and the film adaptation of The Wild Robot.
From the moment I saw the trailer for The Wild Robot movie and heard that the co-director of the first How to Train Your Dragon film, Chris Sanders, would also be directing it, I couldn’t wait to see it in theaters with my son. Leading up to seeing it, I read aloud from Peter Brown’s The Wild Robot book to my son at bedtime, and we got drawn right into the story. After washing ashore during a storm from a shipwreck, a robot named ROZZUM 7134, or Roz for short, navigates living on a remote, forested island. When she rescues an orphaned gosling, Roz decides to name him Brightbill and take care of him. Choosing to become Brightbill’s mother cements the island as Roz’s new home. The animals she meets there leave an incredible impact on her, shaping her into the wonderful wild robot she becomes.
We saw The Wild Robot movie on opening weekend and loved everything about it. Roz, voiced by Lupita Nyong’o, made for an endearing protagonist, and Roz’s journey to becoming a mother for Brightbill really resonated with me. I liked that Roz’s parenthood story wasn’t perfect; it was bumpy, relatable, and full of feeling. Pedro Pascal brought the character Fink the Fox to life as well in the movie, forming a charming team with Roz, Brightbill, and the colorful cast of animal characters they befriend.
I can’t say enough good things about The Wild Robot book and film, so once you’ve read and watched both, check out these books like The Wild Robot next! Perhaps they’ll become for you what The Iron Giant and The Wild Robot have for me.
4 Books Like The Wild Robot
The Search for WondLa by Tony DiTerlizzi
One of the most touching aspects of The Wild Robot is Roz stepping into the role of mother for Brightbill. This enchanting book by Tony DiTerlizzi, coauthor of The Spiderwick Chronicles, also involves a mother robot character. 12-year-old Eva Nine lives in an underground home with a robot named Muthr. Eva, who has never met another human, has always wanted to go above the surface of her bunker. When she and Muthr get the chance to leave, Eva embarks on a quest to find other humans.
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The Girl and the Robot by Oz Rodriguez, Illustrated by Claribel A. Ortega
Like The Wild Robot, this sweet middle grade novel by Oz Rodriguez involves a robot on the run. Mimi Perez has always loved fixing tech with her dad at his e-repair shop, but everything changes after her dad gets deported. As she tries to do what she can to help her family, Mimi agrees to join a few of her old friends in a robotics competition with the chance to win prize money. Things take a turn when a robot crashes on Earth and Mimi brings her home for repairs. As she shelters the robot from federal agents trying to find her, an unexpected friendship grows between them.
Silverwing by Kenneth Oppel
The interactions of the various animal characters in The Wild Robot make up another memorable element of the story. This bat adventure by Kenneth Oppel provides that too. Like Brightbill, a bat named Shade is also the runt of his pack, and he’s also preparing for a winter migration. When he loses his way in a storm, Shade will do whatever it takes to find his pack again, and he’ll make some cool new bat friends along the way. If you’re looking for that sci-fi element in your books like The Wild Robot, you may also want to try Oppel’s Airborn trilogy! It’s one of my favorites and includes similar themes like friendship, interesting technology, mysterious islands, and intriguing wildlife.
Music for Tigers by Michelle Kadarusman
Along with lovable robots, The Wild Robot also celebrates nature and wild things. The theme of environmental conservation runs throughout the story, and this delightful middle grade novel by Michelle Kadarusman embraces that too. Like The Wild Robot, this story takes place in remote wilderness and focuses on a creature causing quite a stir. When Louisa visits her mom’s Australian relatives at their camp in the Tasmanian rainforest, she makes new friends, reads about the endangered Tasmanian tigers in her great-grandmother’s journal, and finds her violin music may just be the key to helping save the last Tasmanian tiger.
Before You Go…
There’s something to be said for books about robots and wild things. The Wild Robot inspires us to dream about the interesting technology ahead for humanity and reminds us of the importance of nurturing the natural world at the same time. Two things can be true: We can be innovative and caretakers of our environment. Roz’s story of becoming part of a found family of wild animals will remain tucked in my heart, and I hope it will in yours, too.
For more books about robots, you may want to check out these Inventive Robot Books for Kids, or for more adult books, try these Best Science Fiction Books About Robots.
The following comes to you from the Editorial Desk.
This week, we’re highlighting a post that had our Managing Editor Vanessa Diaz feeling a type of way. Now, even five years after it was published, Vanessa is still salty about American Dirt. Read on for an excerpt and become an All Access member to unlock the full post.
Picture it: The United States, January 2020. A book with a pretty blue and white cover is making the rounds on the bookish internet. The blue ink forms a beautiful hummingbird motif against a creamy background, a bird associated with the sun god Huitzilopochtli in Aztec mythology. Black barbed wire, at once delicate and menacing, cuts the pattern into a grid resembling an arrangement of Talavera tiles. The package is eye-catching, ostensibly Mexican in feel, and evocative of borders and the migrant experience.
The book tells the story of a bookstore owner in Acapulco, Mexico, who is forced to flee her home when a drug cartel murders everyone in her family except for her young son at a quinceañera. She and the boy are forced to become migrants and embark on a treacherous journey north to the U.S. border, evading the cartel and befriending fellow migrants along the way. The book is being lauded not just as the “it” book of the season but as the immigration story. It gets the Oprah treatment and is praised by everyone from Salma Hayek to the great Sandra Cisneros, who called it “the great novel of Las Américas.”
It’s been over five years, and this book is still the bane of my existence.
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