Norby and the Queen’s Necklace

Janet and Isaac Asimov's Norby and the Queen's Necklace is a time-travel adventure for 9 year olds starring a small, grumpy robot shaped like a barrel.

What happens

Norby has four eyes, arms and legs that telescope out of his body, and a hat he talks through. He belongs to Jeff Wells, a fourteen-year-old Space Cadet in a future Manhattan. They're at the Metropolitan Museum for a live show about Marie Antoinette, with Jeff's big brother Fargo playing the King.

It goes wrong in the best way. Fargo's costume is so tight that his satin trousers split right up the back, on stage. So Jeff has to tie the necklace on the Queen instead, while Norby shouts from the wings not to.

When the knot pulls tight, Jeff, Fargo and Albany land in a jeweller's shop in Paris in 1785. The necklace was meant to be just a paste copy of a famous diamond one, but it's clearly something much stranger.

Next thing the brothers are thrown into the Bastille as jewel thieves! Their cellmate is Marcel, a tiny clockmaker who used to climb inside his family's mechanical figures to work them, and he's due to be executed that afternoon.

It's clever, old-fashioned science fiction. There's real history in it (Benjamin Franklin is living just outside Paris) and the time travel gets properly twisty. Change one thing in 1785 and home might not be there any more.

The humour is mostly squabbling. Norby thinks Fargo acts without thinking, Fargo threatens to use Norby's barrel for storing mothballs, and Jeff is the sensible one stuck in the middle.

It's worth thinking about who it suits. Jeff is fourteen and some of the vocabulary is quite grown-up. The boys are also taken out to watch Marcel kneel at an executioner's block stained with dried blood, and there's plenty of talk of hanging and beheading.

A sensitive reader might find that scene upsetting. A confident reader who likes robots, puzzles and a bit of history will be very happy with it.

What to read next

Jeff and Norby have lots more adventures. For another one, try Norby and the Lost Princess, where the head of Space Command rings with a new mission while Fargo's drumming rattles Norby's circuits.