The Day I Started a Mega Robot Invasion

Tom McLaughlin's The Day I Started a Mega Robot Invasion is a very silly sci-fi comedy for 7 year olds about a girl who builds a robot to do her homework.

What happens

Molly is an inventorneer, which is part inventor and part engineer. Her past creations include a bike with eight wheels and a computer with a fondue set bolted on. (It was only a small fire.) She is NOT a fan of school.

One Saturday her mum and dad head off on their tandem in matching banana-yellow Lycra. Molly is left with geography homework about oxbow lakes. So she builds Bob, a six-foot robot made from Dad's old computer and bits of Mum's old car, to write it for her.

Bob gets on the internet and discovers custard, disco and baths. He doesn't fancy oxbow lakes either. So he builds a robot of his own to do the homework for him. Can you see where this is going?

Each chapter is an hour of the afternoon, and by five o'clock there are seventeen Bobs in Molly's house. Make that eighteen. They're munching on a bin, the radiator and very nearly Dad's car keys.

The jokes come thick and fast. Next door, nosy Mrs Jones is spying on stilts and then with a drone. Her son happens to run a TV news channel that's desperate for a scary story. Meanwhile the original Bob is lying in a bath of custard listening to the Bee Gees.

Some of the funniest bits poke fun at the news and at panicking grown-ups (the Prime Minister tells everyone to go and panic-buy Pot Noodles). Those may sail over younger heads, but if you're reading it aloud you'll get a laugh out of them.

Molly's plan will make perfect sense to anyone who's ever tried to wriggle out of homework (so, everyone). She's clever, fast-talking and very good at thinking on her feet, even if her first idea is a disaster.

If your reader likes their stories noisy, daft and full of machines going wrong, this is a good bet.

What to read next

For another invention that causes chaos, try The Day That Aliens Nearly Ate Our Brains, also by Tom McLaughlin. That one starts with two best friends turning the dog's old cone into a homemade satellite dish.