Here’s Hank – Robot on the Loose

Here's Hank - Robot on the Loose by Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver is a funny school story for 6 year olds about building a robot in two days flat.

What happens

Principal Love announces the school's first Build-a-Robot competition over the loudspeaker, in between the lost property and a word from his pet frog. Hank writes his name on line ten of the sign-up sheet straight away, which is not like him at all.

Then his friends point out the flaw. The contest was announced a month ago. Everybody else has been building for weeks. It's on Friday, and today is Wednesday.

Hank isn't worried. He's going to give it the old Zipzer attitude.

What he actually has is a dining table, two friends and a kitchen drawer his mum calls the one of everything drawer. Stanley the sock-picker-upper ends up with a baby spoon for one arm and a plastic takeaway fork for the other. His front wheels are a toilet roll tube cut in half and wound with tape. He has two unicorn heads, because they were the best bits left in a princess Lego set.

It's very silly. It's also oddly convincing, because you watch them solve each piece with whatever happens to be lying about.

The part that isn't silly is Jaden. He's a third-grader who sits by himself on a bench, wears a buttoned-up vest and tie, arranges his lunch bags so nothing touches anything else and eats thirty-three grapes a day, no more. He knows everything about motors and explains it in words nobody can follow. Hank needs his help and has to work out how to ask for it.

Nothing about either boy gets labelled or explained away, which I think is exactly right. Hank can't spell, can't reliably tell left from right and loses things constantly. Jaden finds new situations hard. They're two children who are good at completely different things.

A heads-up on the bullying. Nick McKelty pants on the back of Hank's neck, calls him Zipperbutt, and then jeers at Jaden from the front row in front of the entire school, loudly enough for Jaden to hear. A grown-up steps in both times, but it happens in public and it lands.

The sentences are short and plain, so this suits a child who wants a real story without a wall of words on the page.

What to read next

If they like the way Hank takes things apart, Danger! Tiger Crossing has another boy who does the same. Tiger Brooks calls his bedroom a lab, and the thing he fiddles with next door turns out to be a magic picture frame.