This is the kind of children’s book that connects best with older readers who celebrate childhood and are willing to surrender to the simple but strong emotions expressed in the adventures of Lucy, Ezra and their extraordinary manufactured friend. The complex story and the occasionally somber tone, reminiscent of Ray Bradbury's Dark Carnival stories, may be a bit overwhelming for some of the book’s intended audience. The Robot King takes flight on a “shimmering road of fireflies”. A “wild herd of bicycles” tumble through the clouds. The children are shown sitting in a moonlit cemetery, an abandoned roller coaster and a skeletal Ferris wheel sticking up in the distance, beyond the tombstones. Iron stoves, bicycles and every day objects are made to fly, an old abandoned amusement park revives itself, carousel horses break free and gallop away, and the children ride a Ferris wheel to the Moon and beyond.Īuthor Brian Selznick illustrates this intoxicating tale with fifteen sumptuous pencil drawings, meticulously detailed. Soon, the children are swept up in the Robot King’s adventures. When she gives it a heart - her mother’s music box - the Robot King comes alive and the magic begins. She dresses it up in an old red velvet coat and blue bow tie. One day, she builds a man-sized doll using wire, china, spoons, a hairbrush, a mirror, keys, twigs, any old thing, including a wooden manikin’s head. His older sister busies herself building weird mechanical toys combining the discarded objects her brother collects and the forgotten odds and ends found in an old attic. “He’s alive, Ezra! He’s alive!”īrian Selznick’s The Robot King (1995) is a story - at once melancholic and magic - about two Victorian-era children and how they cope with loss. The Robot King’s electric body threw off golden sparks that filled the air like fireworks. Lucy screamed as the attic burst with light.
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