Robotics for Babies

Robotics for Babies is part of the “Baby University” series, and, like the other books, it tackles advanced concepts for very young children. Starting with a simple task that a child will understand, cutting out circles, the story slowly develops the idea of what a robot is and what it can do.

Chris Ferrie is a physicist and mathematician, and Dr. Sarah Kaiser is a research engineer and physicist, and so both know the field of robotics well enough to give a good introduction. In addition, it is obvious that they know how to approach this topic in a simple way to make a readable story. Within the illustrations, there are words that can be ignored for younger children and included for those who could understand them. For example, there are several pages with simple computer code written on the face of the machine. The story builds slowly and ends with having a robot that will make circles.

The illustrations are also by Chris Ferrie and are integral to the story as the words alone do not convey all of the ideas that are presented. For example, the page that says, “Let’s get to work!” shows a piece of paper, a pencil and scissors to be used in cutting out more circles. Each illustration is simple and clear with great consistency among them, with, for example, the paper always being the same teal colour.

As an adult who is going to be reading books to a young child, it is very helpful to have a variety of topics to choose from. If you like the idea of presenting robots, computer programming and science, in general, Robotics for Babies is a very good choice.