Book Review: CatStronauts: Robot Rescue

Today we are pleased to bring you our review of the fourth book in Drew Brockington’s CatStronauts series: Robot Rescue. We love this series of graphic novels in which cats explore space, and Robot Rescue may be our favorite so far.

In this volume, Cat-Stro-Bot—a robot created by Blanket the cat—is on the surface of Europa constructing a drill to search for water, and possibly life. All looks promising until something goes horribly wrong (that’s Kerplow! in comic-book-speak). Direct contact with Cat-Stro-Bot is severed, and it looks like Blanket has lost his best friend. But there is still a signal coming from Europa, indicating the robot is still operational. Unfortunately, Flight Director Maisy says a rescue mission to get him back is a no-go. It’s just too risky.

Poor Blanket sinks into a funk, until his friends Major, Pom Pom, and Waffles team up with him to hatch a plan—one that no one else in CATSUP will know about. All they have to do is get up to the Space Station, where their buddies the CosmoCats have an ion drive ship. They’ll just borrow that ship and zip out to Europa and back in, oh, a short 160 days or so. To cover for their absence, they’ll paint four prototype robots to look just like them and take over their duties at CATSUP.

What could go wrong?

Well, it turns out other space-exploring cats are not so willing to go along with the CatStronauts’ plans. First, our heroes have to stow away on a supply ship to get to the space station, and then they have to steal (ahem, “borrow”) the ion drive ship from the CosmoCats, who are not too pleased about that. Meanwhile, back at CATSUP, the prototype robots are doing a bang-up job with their experiments … until they start, you know, banging things up. Those CatStronauts are going to be in big trouble when they get home!

Our verdict

Okay, we already told you that this may be our favorite CatStronauts book yet, so you know we loved it. The art is a joy, and as with the previous books in the series, we sped through the story once and then went back again and again to enjoy the visual details we missed the first time. This series has strong themes of friendship and teamwork, which show up in this volume as the four CatStronauts band together to rescue a friend who technically is not even alive. But a friend is a friend, we say. It’s easy to fall in love with the CatStronauts; they are cute, adventurous, smart, caring, and willing to engage in high jinks. We think you’ll love the adventure and humor of Robot Rescue. And if you know someone who’s 8–12 years old (the recommended age range), they’ll probably love it too.

Highly recommended!

A note on the "Paws Up" system: Miss C gives either one or two paws up. One paw is for a good read; two paws is for a great read. She never gives three or four paws because that would require her to lie on her back...and Miss C does not do that!

The link below is an Amazon Associates link. If you purchase the book through this link, old SoLT and I could get some coin for our kibble account. Thank you!