The Wild Robot Escapes: A Nice Sequel to a Nice Book - Abdurrahman

      To revisit books I’ve read younger from my last blog (go read it first!), in which I explained why The Wild Robot was such a heartwarming book, I will be reviewing the book’s sequel in this blog, The Wild Robot Escapes. What makes this book more unique than the first one is that it touches on identity and purpose a lot more than the previous one did.

     Before I summarize The Wild Robot Escapes, I must introduce Roz to you in The Wild Robot. She is a robot who found herself activated on a island without humans. To survive, she had to learn from the island’s animals, so she learned their language. At first, the island inhabitants rejected and were afraid of the new addition to their lives, but after Roz responded with kindness, gave a helping hand in many situations, and showed the animals her  adopted gosling, Brightbill, the animals loved Roz. Then, at the end, her robotic past haunted her, and a battle of nature versus technology took place. After the battle, many animals are injured and Roz is severely damaged. She is forced to leave the only home she’s ever known, including her friends and family, and go to the human world to get the necessary repairs for herself and promise a lasting safety for the island.

     The story picks off in The Wild Robot Escapes by introducing Roz’s new life at a farm, owned by a father and two children. This story takes place in a futuristic time, where robots do the dirty work and humans relax. Roz’s sole purpose at the farm is to do farmwork, and she grows a distaste for her working life (the life of every other robot in the human world), missing her old life at the island, where she is free with the animals. This is what makes Roz “defective” or “wild:” her desire for freedom. After coincidentally finding Brightbill in the farm, they escape the farm and set out on a long, secret journey to return to their island and its animals, in which they face all kinds of perils, with the two most dangerous threats to Roz’s return being humans and robots.

     The Wild Robot Escapes effectively hooked my attention during my entire time reading it, especially during Roz’s long journey, because it was loaded with suspense. Roz knows that the farm has let Roz's creators, TechLab Industries, know that she has fled, so search teams of robots have been dispatched to find her. At any time during the journey, a search team in an airship could have suddenly popped out of nowhere and caught Roz. Then, they would take her by force and send her to TechLab Industries and have her destroyed because she was identified as a "defective" robot. But when she is found, Roz doesn’t let herself get destroyed that easily, and I always wanted to see the outcomes of such situations. Roz and Brightbill are frequently separated, making me always wonder about their reunion. The most suspense-packed times were when Roz goes undercover to cross towns and cities in her journey. She had to act like a perfectly neutral and normal robot, like all the other robots around her. If there was something abnormal or "wild" about her, the humans and robots around her could report her as defective to a robot search team. This was particularly hard for Roz, given that she learned to always be free on her island. As the story gets closer to the end, there are desperate times when it is an undeniable game-over for Roz and Brightbill, and there is seemingly nothing that could give hope for Roz to ever seeing Brightbill or her animal friends again.

     As I mentioned earlier, Roz learns a lot about her identity and wonders about her purpose in The Wild Robot Escapes. Throughout her secret journey with Brightbill, she sees many kinds of robots at hard work doing all kinds of tasks in towns and cities. Roz realizes that, being a robot, she was created to be working like all of the other robots in the human world, but prefers her old life at the island, which is where she learned to develop her own thoughts and relationships. It can be argued that Roz isn't defective because she did what any other robot would have done if they found themselves stranded on an island. However, despite the dissimilarities, I find Roz quite similar to the other robots in terms of purpose. The robots served humans by a variety of ways, like working in construction, factories, sewers, and Roz served and enhanced the lives of the animal inhabitants in many ways. At the end of the book, Roz is more able to understand her purpose that she shares with the rest of the robots in the human world.

     Overall, The Wild Robot Escapes is a sequel that is as great as its previous book, The Wild Robot. I recommend this book to anyone who wants a great read. It focuses a lot on identity, purpose, hope, and patience, and uses these themes to create a story that leaves a lasting effect on the reader, making them ponder on some questions. What is YOUR purpose? How do you fit in with the rest of humanity?