Blip!

A robot’s spaceship crashes onto an unfamiliar planet in Richards’s first children’s book, told through sequential panels and little text beyond a scattering of sound effects, including the robot’s repeating “Blip.” With its squared-off head, chunky white spacesuit, and backpack, Richards’s hero looks a bit like an amalgamation of the Tin Man, a Teletubby, and an intrepid middle schooler. Scared off by a loud banging noise, the robot travels across surreal terrain filled with oversize mushrooms, camouflaged dragons, and treacherous swamps, an aesthetic that evokes the underground comics of the 1970s. Attempts at friendship—with a Cheshire-like cat, a bird that won’t stop jabbering, and a brown-skinned girl in a space helmet—don’t go especially well. After several death-defying escapes, the robot learns why the first rule of getting lost in the wilderness is to stay put: that banging sound from the opening pages is actually a female robot repairing her spaceship, which they use to depart together. The robot’s difficulties in connecting with the beings he encounters heightens the loneliness and strangeness of his journey, making the friendship he finally finds all the more rewarding. Ages 4–6. (Sept.)