Nice Review

Thanks to Lucy for telling me about the review of my book in The Village. I’m completely immune now to good and bad things said about my other work but this is nice:

Robots Don’t Cry. Written and illustrated by Bob Byrne. O’Brien Press €5.95 Aged 8+

Robots Don’t Cry is number 15 in the O’Brien Flyers series for young independent readers. Like other books in the series, it is instantly appealing with its comic-book format of large print, excellent big pictures and a narrative that is easy and exciting to follow.

Bimbot, the robot hero, has been thrown out of the treehouse gang for being a crybaby and, as any self-respecting child of five will tell you, robots don’t cry.

Poor Bimbot strays into the big, dark wood to try to recover from the shock of his rejection. Here he encounters characters who restore his confidence and eventually lead to acceptance by the treehouse gang.

Obviously the story can be taken as an allegory of boys being bullied and shamed by their peers because they don’t conform. Maybe there is a growing trend recognising that, in an age of increasing on-line interaction, messages can be best transmitted through machines. After all, recently in Cars we had vehicles acting out a tale of smalltown life. Or maybe Bob Byrne, the author of Robots Don’t Cry, has realised that to engage young readers in a story of rejection and redemption, a non-human victim can be more effective than human stereotypes. Excellent stuff.

Oh lah dee dah, yes there was alot of contextual psycho-mapping done in the research for this book or maybe I just love drawing cute robots! He has loads of Inspector Gadget style stuff inside his little robot body that wasn’t included in the book. Oh Bimbot, at least you still love me.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 at 3:01 pm and is filed under Bob's Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.