SOLVED. MG SciFi. Boy and his loyal robot in space; robot gets color vision for the first time. Read early- to mid-1970s

[SamSpayedPI]

I'm hoping this will be an easy one because I just came across it in the search for someone else's book. I forgot to add it to my goodreads list, though, and now I can't remember it.

Anyway, it's a middle grade children's novel about a boy and his loyal robot pal. In the beginning, they are traveling on a spaceship.

The one scene I remember is when the robot's vision bulb burns out. Someone on the ship gives the boy a spare replacement bulb, and it's a color bulb; the robot's vision was originally only black-and-white. The boy is upset because he wanted to be the one to give the robot color vision (I thought that the boy was being quite a jerk about it).

The robot is ecstatic with his color vision and, looking out of a porthole, exclaims that even things like stars had slightly different colors, some more red, some more blue, some yellowish. He then said "Even the black of the [something] looks different!" and the crewman corrects him, saying something to the effect of, "no, black is black."

I can't remember what the black something was, but I do remember looking it up in the dictionary. I think I was familiar with the word itself, but not how it seemed to be used/defined in the context of the story, and I remember that the dictionary didn't really help. Maybe "the black of the hold"? "The black of the void"? Something like that.

I don't remember anything else; even whether the entire book is set on a spaceship or if they eventually land on a planet or back on earth.

Thanks in advance for any help.

[SamSpayedPI]

Never mind; I found it. I searched the Internet Archive for "the black of the void" and up it popped.

It's The Runaway Robot by Lester del Rey.

[Rouan]

Thanks for posting about this book. I remember reading it in grade school and had forgotten about it. Now I am going to try to find a copy to read for nostalgia's sake. :)

[SamSpayedPI]

Rouan wrote: "Now I am going to try to find a copy to read for nostalgia's sake. :)"

It's available at Open Library.

[Andy]

SamSpayedPI wrote: "Never mind; I found it. I searched the Internet Archive for "the black of the void" and up it popped.

It's The Runaway Robot by Lester del Rey."

What a great book - I enjoyed it a lot as a kid.