Publishers Weekly
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This beguiling ark story, splendidly drafted in wordless spreads, stars a robot zookeeper who combines the spare-parts body of Wall-E with the gentle bearing of Amos McGee. The enormous robot dwarfs the toylike giraffes, pandas, tigers, and other charismatic megafauna that it cares for in a postapocalyptic landscape of half-submerged architectural gems, and it makes model sailboats after a long day of labor. When rain begins to fall and the sea rises further, the robot gathers the animals and executes a large-scale idea. Usable wreckage, the robot’s fascination with boatbuilding, and its own built-in tools produce a magnificent sloop capable of carrying the whole menagerie to safety—until a massive storm strikes at sea. While the place where the ship grounds is desolate, the unexpected appearance of a new friend changes everything. An epigraph from Jane Goodall makes the story’s conservation message clear, but Becker (The Tree and the River) avoids polemics in favor of worldbuilding that suggests the need for early action, underscores the power of practical measures, and holds out the promise of hope. Ages 5–9. (Mar.)

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Caldecott Honoree Becker’s dystopian imaginings once more find fruit in picture-book format. The biblical Noah as a gargantuan robot? Stranger things have been conceived of. In flooded lands replete with incredibly detailed architecture (think David Macaulay meets WALL-E’s world) but with no humans in sight, a towering yellow robot, the word NOA on its arm, powered by wind turbines from its back, sets forth to collect all the animals of the world. The waters rise to NOA’s knees, but still our robotic avatar collects with infinite kindness every giraffe, panda, tiger, and elephant it can find. The crumbling world around them hints at the zoos and circuses where once these creatures made their homes. Now, they sail away with NOA on a boat built by the automaton. This wordless tale outlines their struggles, from storm to shipwreck and, ultimately, to hope. The allusions to both Noah’s Ark and Eden are sly but ever present, set as they are against Becker’s sumptuous watercolor and pen-and-ink backdrops. Here, the very existence of life on Earth hangs in the balance, and the stakes have never been higher. Minute details pepper each scene, giving sharp-eyed readers the chance to find something new every time they page through this book (like the fact that the meat-eating tigers are kept in their own separate cage on the robot’s boat). True fans will find themselves poring over these pictures for hours. Epic storytelling erupts on the page without the use of a single word. Superb. (Picture book. 4-7) Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

In another visionary wordless picture book by multiple award-winning author-illustrator Becker, an endearing, gigantic, yellow-bodied robot wearing a quiver of wind turbines tends to the feeding of zoo animals; as rising waters turn their habitats into increasingly smaller islands, the resourceful robot fashions an enormous vessel from salvaged flotsam. Vast skies turn from rosy dawns to star-scattered nights as the boat sets off carrying its cargo of rescued animals, but a thrashing storm leaves it wrecked on a sandbank. Fortunately, another enormous robot—purple and sporting a solar panel on its back—arrives in a hot air balloon to offer friendly assistance. The new partners sail skyward with their animal charges toward a new island home. Compelling environmental references are both dramatic (the shifting splendor of skies and seas in spreads of magnificent watercolor washes) and specific (the ecology symbols painted on the robots’ bellies and the yellow robot’s ever-present flamingo friends.) In this gentle postapocalyptic fable, presented through scenes both breathtaking and charmingly inventive, an ingenious and courageous struggle for survival yields a tender and hopeful ending.