David at What’s Good to Read has delved into Jenny Moore’s new Middle-grade fiction, Audrey Orr and the Robot Rage;
Jenny Moore’s Audrey Orr and the Robot Rage is a comedy adventure for children aged 7-12 years. It is fast paced, filled with humour, adventure and robots wanting vengeance. It makes a good story but also has an underlying theme of identity, self-esteem, family and will appeal to children affected by Amblyopia (lazy eye).
We really enjoyed it. The characters are funny and really appeal to kids sense of humour:
- Audrey, the eye-patch wearing, comic writing heroine who has a great imagination but suffers from low self-esteem (because of her eye-patch)
- Mrs Orr, Audrey’s competition loving mum
- Mr Orr, Audrey’s dad who is constantly eating and is call Pooh-Pooh by Audrey’s mum, and has a foot fungal infection that he is always taking pictures of for his blog
- Mr Windbags the farting cat
- Grandad who is always knitting oddly shaped items
- Mr Stickler who is a stickler for the rules
- Dr A N Droyde, the robot creating professor
- And of course, the techo-twin Awesome (Awful), the crazy robot clone
At nearly 300 pages, it is a rather long children’s book, but it is split into 26 easy to read chapters with larger text than an adult reading book, so it isn’t as daunting as it first appears.
The characters are strong, and Audrey is a good role model for children reading the book (especially if they are affected by Amblyopia and have a low self-esteem because of it).
It is quite fast paced and has lots of humour, including Norwegian words that children will find hilarious (Fart is Norwegian for speed, Fartsdump is speedbump).
This is very much a book that children will enjoy reading. It has excellent characters, is packed with adventure and humour and will appeal to children on lots of different levels. If you enjoyed Agent Starling, you (and your children) will enjoy this.
Audrey Orr and the Robot Rage is a fun, easy to read funny story that will capture the imagination. What kid doesn’t like poo, farting, cat sick and robots?
Rating: 5/5