This delightful and relatable-for-all-ages book follows a little girl navigating her day with her grandma. Her "robot" represents her desire to keep everything familiar, just the way she is used to. But as she and Grandma continue to spend time together, she learns that things don’t always have to be perfect to be wonderful. A heartwarming story that teaches kids that it’s okay to want control, but it’s also okay to let go and try new things.

— Michelle Park, Emmy Award-Winning Broadcast Journalist and Content Creator

In Rusu’s picture book, a young girl’s visit to her grandma’s goes wrong at every turn thanks to an obsessive compulsiveness that manifests as an imaginary robot friend.

The narrator, a young redheaded girl, wears robot-themed socks every day and, in doing so, imagines a red robot companion constantly by her side: “My robot is AMAZING! / She makes things go just right / and always gets things done her way / from morning until night.” The robot is very particular about routines, which becomes problematic when the girl has to spend a day at her grandma’s. Grandma has the wrong type of soap, the wrong toys, and the wrong color of plate for the cookies: “I sneak a look at the pile of treats / on a blue plate by the sink. / BZZT. BOOP. BRRRR.‘NO! NO! NO!’ / ‘WE ONLY USE THE PINK!’” Will Grandma find a way to placate Robot and salvage the visit? Rusu and illustrator Morón tell a cute and relatable story, depicting not only the girl’s “difficult” behavior but also the condition that underlies it—expressed by way of the oversized, exaggeratedly emotive robot. Morón’s pen-and-ink images capture the protagonists’ personalities as well as the incidental action against uncluttered backdrops.

A sweet and playful yet serious story.

-Kirkus Reviews

Rusu continues her Mighty Moods series, after There’s a Yeti in My Tummy, with this charming tale of a young girl trying to maneuver through life when things just don’t go according to plan. Jamie has a special friend—a robot in her socks, who “makes things go just right and always gets things done her way.” That includes making sure Jamie gets the right plate at mealtime and never has to take a barefoot nap, but all that efficiency comes at a cost: when life throws Jamie the curveball of spending the day with her Gram, who isn’t quite in sync with her robot friend, it turns out to be a lot messier than either Jamie—or her grandmother—expect.

Rusu perfectly captures the black and white thinking of childhood, as Jamie insists that nothing at her Gram’s house is the way it should be: the princess soap is all wrong, her stuffed animal didn’t make it into the car, and—gasp!—Gram has the nerve to serve cookies on the wrong-colored plate. But there’s a deeper message here, too, and adult readers will relish the valuable lesson that a little grace can go a long way. When the day turns south, Jamie’s grandmother is understandably frustrated, but she soon realizes that she and Jamie have quite a bit in common; in Gram’s own words, “I have a robot too, you know. She comes out when I’m stressed.” That small attempt to connect immediately sparks with Jamie, and young readers will be delighted when a big, drippy ice cream cone is the answer to “turn[ing] this day around.” This is a cheerful reminder that “life’s better with a little mess.”

Takeaway: Playful depiction of how to handle life’s curveballs (and robots!)

-BookLife Review