The Wild Robot is a book written and illustrated by Peter Brown was a book about a robot that got stranded on an island before being turned on (birth) with no one else of its kind. Roz, the robot, felt alone and defeated when she couldn’t understand any of the animals on the island, was made fun of, and bullied. Before long, Roz learned the animals’ languages and could communicate with them. She slowly started building relationships with the more trusting animals and gained everyone’s trust eventually. One big thing that happened to change the course of Roz’s story line was when she killed the goose eggs and parent geese on accident on her fall down the mountain. Roz made it her personal mission to adopt and care for the one baby goose that lived. Roz met many animals through her adventures with the baby goose she adopted, Beakbill. Toward the end of the book, Beakbill had to migrate south to avoid the harsh winter. Upon returning, Beakbill informed Roz he had found a factory where many more robots live. The robots come for Roz and despite everyone’s best efforts, Roz has to leave the island in the end.
This book had a lot of themes spinning around throughout the entirety of the book like friendship, helping others, accepting others, what it means to be alive, different roles in society and much much more. However, what stood out to me the most and what I would like to bring into a classroom if I got to share this novel with a class would be the theme that family looks different to different people.
Whether that is because the people in the family are different or the family itself is a different dynamic than society is used to seeing. The animals in this book have families made of beavers, deer, geese, squirrels, bears and robots mixed in with geese. All of these families look different to someone looking, but it is shown and known in the book that all of these families are real and full of love.
There are a couple of social-political messages in the story. One of my favorites regarding gender norms was in chapter 28. The beaver and Roz are discussing if the baby goose and Roz are a family or not. (Peter Brown 2016) “I have tried to tell him that I am not his mother,” said the robot. “But he does not understand.” “Well, you will have to act like his mother if you want him to survive.” (p. 74) This reached out to me because of a couple reasons. I hadn’t really thought much about the gender until Roz did feel bad for killing the geese, which I feel like is normally feminized. Having tot “act” motherly kind of flips those stereotypes of all women being motherly.
Peter Brown also portrayed our societal views of the circle of life in part of the book as well. (Peter Brown 2016) “The robot gently cradled the fragile thing in her hand. Without a family, the unhatched gosling would surely die. Roz knew that some animals had to die for others to live. That was how the wilderness worked” (p. 59). I was kind of appalled at the talk of death in a children’s book but Brown does a great job of normalizing it, just like humans do in real life. This is such a real world portrayal that I almost missed, but felt it made the book easier to connect to.
An activity I thought of while reading Peter Brown's book that could be fun with any age range of students while reading this book would to have them self assess themselves regarding morals, social availability and friendship (and anything else a teacher wants to show into the mix). Asking the students to create (build if wanting to incorporate STEM/STEAM - which everyone should) a robot on their own out of either items found outside (could possibly make this into a community service trash clean-up type of deal also) and create their own version of Roz. After the robots are created, I think it would be interesting the the students were told that this robot was trying to also become human and blend in with its surroundings (us). Their robot would copy them, follow them, and pick up traits from their creator. Having the students share how their robot will act and what traits it consumed from the student in writing/words/ arts integration or whatever they want. This could help empower the students to be happy with themselves and really dig deep into what makes them who they are. This is just an idea and definitely needs fine tuning...just typing out my thoughts!!
