The Wild Robot, by Peter Brown
Fantasy/Science fiction
In the middle of the ocean, a cargo ship is carrying five hundred brand-new robots when a hurricane strikes. It’s chaos: most of the robots sink to the ocean floor, but five are thrown to the winds. Wooden boxes are dashed against the rocky shore of a small island, and the robots inside are destroyed.
Except for one.
One box lands safely, and a group of curious sea otters swarm over it. They open the box – and in the process, they activate the robot.
Roz – a.k.a. ROZZUM Unit 7134 – was designed to adapt to her environment. She learns to camouflage her metal body, to communicate with animals, to build fires that that keep them warm. And after an accident kills a family of geese, leaving just one egg behind, she also learns how to care for her adopted son, a gosling named Brightbill.
But even though Roz has brought wonderful new ideas to the animals, she’s inadvertently brought danger along, too – and it might be that the only way to keep her new friends safe is to leave them behind.