One of the most in-demand juvenile titles of 2018, The Wild Robot Escapes introduces new questions about the nature of conscious existence while revisiting ones raised by The Wild Robot. Can a robot be alive the same way as a human? Do circuits and wires have the potential to produce the spark of real life, or are they a simulant, fooling a robot brain into thinking it has emotions? If a robot deviates from the maker's design to engage with emotions that seem human, has that robot attained a higher level of being, or is it exhibiting symptoms of a glitch, maybe even a dangerous one? Roz the robot can't outrun the implications of her own existence, which is why she resigned herself to be captured and returned to human society at the end of The Wild Robot. She much prefers life on a remote island with animals, including her adopted son, Brightbill the goose, but Roz had no desire to endanger her furry friends whenever the next fleet of RECO robots would arrive to retrieve her. Phase two of her adventure is about to commence.
ROZZUM robots are a valued commodity, including unit 7134, known to us as Roz. If the manufacturer detected a hint of her ability to think for herself, however, Roz would be destroyed. There's no room for dissent among technical products, not even A.I. robots. Roz's special awareness, ironically, allows her to evade being screened out for destruction. She passes the checkup, has a few new parts installed, and is shipped to a family in need of a ROZZUM robot. Roz ends up on a run-down farm owned by a Mr. Shareef, the latest in a family line of proud farmers. Maintaining a profitable farm in the contemporary world is a challenge, and Mr. Shareef has barely been able to stay afloat. Roz is needed as an extra pair of eyes and hands for Mr. Shareef, and she sets to work diligently, earning the farm animals' trust and the adoration of Mr. Shareef's young son (Jad) and daughter (Jaya). Roz entertains the children with tales of a robot on an island who speaks to animals in their own languages, but Jad and Jaya don't suspect that Roz is recounting her own experiences. The electronic tracker in her torso prevents Roz from leaving the farm, but someday she'll have to take the risk and ask Jad and Jaya for help in going home. Otherwise, Roz will be stranded here forever, never to reunite with Brightbill. Will the children sympathize, or report her to Mr. Shareef as a malfunctioning robot?
Seasons pass and Roz settles in on the farm. Using creative means, she repels the wolves that skulk around looking to pick off stray cows; Roz won't let her friends be preyed upon by carnivores. Flocks of geese stop by, but Brightbill isn't among them. The geese are impressed by Roz, though, and carry far and wide the legend of a robot seeking her goose son. Is it a matter of time until word reaches Brightbill and he hones in on his mother's location? Yet the tracker chip means Roz can't set foot off Mr. Shareef's land without him being alerted. Removing the chip is a feat of precision robotics that Roz's animal friends aren't capable of, but would Jad and Jaya give it a try? Of course, even if the tracker were removed, the journey to the island is long and arduous, and airships full of RECO robots would trail Roz relentlessly. Can our robot and her son find peace in a world that views their relationship as unnatural, and will Roz ever discover why she, unlike every other ROZZUM unit, appears to have feelings and ambitions like a human being?
Public perception of Roz as dangerous is based on circular reasoning, but no one is eager to listen to a rogue robot's counterarguments. Society labels her a threat because she flees her manufacturer, but who wouldn't flee a team ordered to take you into custody so you can be terminated? If your pursuer generates the peril that caused you to run, how is running from them proof that you're dangerous? Self-preservation against an agency determined to wipe you out is justified. Roz's individualism is diagnosed as a defect by her makers; that seems unfair, but do we know it's not a defect? Jaya brings up the point. "Roz, don't take this the wrong way...but is it possible that you are defective?" Roz responds, "I have asked myself that same question. I do not feel defective. I feel...different. Is being different the same as being defective?" If we differ in some way that society deems worrisome, should we be dismissed as defective? Can we then be destroyed without crisis of conscience? Are there others like us who resemble the obedient "robots" around them, but are actually concealing their "defect" from those who would harm them for it? Roz wonders this when she sees other robots. "Were any of them quietly dreaming of escape? Or were they all just mindless machines, content with their place in the world?" Roz can't know the minds of individual robots, but she knows her own. She will never be satisfied just carrying out orders as though she were nothing but wires and buttons. She built a beautiful life on her island with Brightbill and their animal friends...and she'll do everything she can to reclaim it.
I loved The Wild Robot. As a treatise on the awesome, convoluted realities of being alive, it's as profound in its own way as Patrick Ness's More Than This or Shaun David Hutchinson's We Are the Ants, while providing as wholesome a children's story as Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Margaret Wise Brown, or Robert Lawson ever did. The Wild Robot Escapes revisits that excellence without equaling the originality, natural wonder, or philosophical potency of the first book, but it's a good novel, and offers closure to Roz's personal journey. I'd rate The Wild Robot Escapes two and a half stars. Peter Brown forged his reputation through picture books, but as a novelist he's rarely equaled, and the Wild Robot arc is the stuff of classic literature. I am blessed to have experienced it.