ROBERT AND THE ROBOT

The much-explored territory of boys from Earth and robots from space still yields plenty of good fun in Schwab's economical tale. Robert is an aspiring artist who balks at cleaning his room. After he sees a UFO crash land, he fixes it, discovers it's actually a robot named Hugo-2 and hires him as chambermaid. The full-bleed, black-crayon-and-wash illustrations look as though the boy could have drawn them, and lend the book an unassuming charm. Equally appealing is the robot's earnest, metallic-sounding speech ("I-speak-two-million-languages-know-eight-million-stories-fifteen-billion-games-seven-wash-cycles-fifty-million...") and his alien eagerness to return a favor in kind (" 'You could clean up my room.' 'Thank-you-for-this-mission,' Hugo 2 squeaked happily"). Schwab's freckle-faced hero is spunky enough to open up a strange yellow robot and stick his hands inside it; despite his creative leanings, Robert shows all the signs of an industrial engineer in the making. He even realizes that if two small batteries can power the robot through one room cleaning, four video-camera batteries might produce some really interesting results. Schwab's story provides smiles for the most fractious of bed-goers—even if it may not induce them to clean their rooms. Ages 2-up. (Apr.)