Standroid & Dandroid Make a Mess

by Michael Slack, Michael Slack (Illustrator)

Overview

Power up with robots Standroid and Dandroid in this playful board book! When two robots make one giant mess, will they figure out how to clean it up?

Standroid’s battery is full and Dandroid’s charging is complete. The two robots are fueled up and ready to play! How do robots play? They crash! crash! crash! And they squish! squish! squish! And they end up making a very big mess! Error! Will the two robots figure out how to clean it all up?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781534405677
Publisher:	Little Simon
Publication date:	04/03/2018
Series:	Standroid & Dandroid
Pages:	36
Sales rank:	745,541
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	2 - 4 Years

About the Author

Michael Slack is an artist, illustrator, and character designer. His humorous, character-driven art has been recognized by Society of Illustrators Los Angeles, Applied Arts, Pictoplasma, Computer Arts, and SBS Digital Design. Michael’s illustrations have appeared in books, magazines, and on TV. His paintings and drawings have been exhibited in the US and Europe.

Michael Slack is an artist, illustrator, and character designer. His humorous, character-driven art has been recognized by Society of Illustrators Los Angeles, Applied Arts, Pictoplasma, Computer Arts, and SBS Digital Design. Michael’s illustrations have appeared in books, magazines, and on TV. His paintings and drawings have been exhibited in the US and Europe.

Editorial Reviews

04/02/2018
Two robots—Standroid, who is pink and tall with shovel-shaped legs and a long neck, and Dandroid, who is stocky and yellow—are charged up with “Positron Juice” and ready to go: “All Systems Activating. Initiating play sequence.” As the title suggests, that also means making quite a mess, which Slack conveys with a bevy of flying materials and ample sound effects. The robots squish green balls, crash into blocky, blue shapes, and twirl with yarn until they have thick, fuzzy piles that they wear like hats and mustaches. It’s all fun, until the robots get stuck in the muck. After “scanning surroundings” and “processing data,” the robots detect a solution. Readers may take a cue from the charming robot pair, as Standroid and Dandroid find a way to make cleaning up almost as much fun as making a mess: “Deploy suds squirters. Scrubbers engaged! Mess terminated!” Ages 2–4. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

2018-06-11
Robot buddies trash the house together and then clean up after themselves.After charging up their batteries, two colorful robots initiate their play sequence and go to town "squishing," "crashing," "twirling," and "splatting" anything in their paths. The artwork is eye-catching and the sound effects fun to read aloud with children, but the mayhem level is unregulated by any moral or practical concern. The narrative is thin. What the robots are squishing and splatting is never specified, and whether or not they should be doing so also goes unaddressed. Commentary is relegated to the "We LOVE squishing" level. Any complexity in the text arises from the introduction of robot and computer terminology: "Splatting TICKLES our GIGGLEBYTES," and "Sensors indicate making a mess is FUN!!" Once mired in the mess they've created, the two friends scan their surroundings, process the data, and identify a solution, which is, of course, to clean up their mess. That lesson in problem-solving may be the most useful moment in the book. The clean-up scenes involve wiping, slurping with vacuum hoses, squirting suds, and scrubbing until the mess is "terminated." The message that one should clean up after making a mess is a good one. Unfortunately, the idea of toddlers smearing goo and squirting suds sounds as potentially disastrous as all the squishing and splatting that created the problem in the first place.OK, if aptly titled. (Board book. 18 mos.-4)

Kirkus Reviews