ARTificial Intelligence

January 1, 2025
This story, dedicated to "all the Amazing Illustrators" who are "the real AI," follows a daydreaming robot in the bustling factory where he works. The robot feels out of place: an early illustration shows the chip used to create him covered in drops of paint. Though he has "big, colorful, and grand" dreams, he doesn't know how to express them. When he accidentally wanders outside, he's surprised to see humans, just as busy as robots: "Everyone was in a hurry." The robot finds joy in a museum, where he observes a child in a red beret. Later, in a forest, he meets the same child painting and picks up a paintbrush for the first time. He falls in love with the visual arts, though he learns that both making and describing art are "not easy." Eventually, he shares his newfound passion with his robot friends, and in the end, they're all creating original art -- flipping the usual perception of AI, which is often seen as merely mimicking human creativity. Biedrzycki, celebrating the universal power of art and self-expression, leans on monochromatic and even sepia tones for most of the story, with splashes of vivid colors to represent the robot's artistic expression in the pencil and digitally rendered illustrations. Imagination knows no bounds. Julie Danielson

(Copyright 2025 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)