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A Day with Wilbur Robinson    by William Joyce Amazon.com order for
Day with Wilbur Robinson
by William Joyce
Order:  USA  Can
Laura Geringer, 2006 (2006)
Hardcover

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* *   Reviewed by Hilary Daninhirsch

The Robinsons are a fun family with whom to spend a day, if you like eccentric uncles who shoot themselves out of cannons, cousins who take the tigers for a walk, and dinosaurs who roam the pool because someone left the time machine on again.

The unnamed narrator, a ten-year-old boy, visits his friend Wilbur, and the reader is introduced to an array of very strange Robinson family members with equally strange names - like Uncle Wormly, Uncle Nimbus and Uncle Orbley. The boy and Wilbur spend the bulk of their day searching for Grandpa, and then once they find him, they spend the rest of their time looking for Grandpa's teeth.

Not a whole lot happens in the book; it's just a day with Wilbur Robinson, like the title says. The Robinsons remind me of The Munsters because they are odd without realizing it. The writer is also the creator of the Rolie Polie Olie books and television series. I thought the illustrations looked vaguely familiar ... it's the details in the artwork that really make this a dynamic and unusual book.

Disney is scheduled to release a computer-animated movie based on this book, called Meet the Robinsons. In fact, Joyce wrote the original over ten years ago. Hopefully the movie will have a little more adventure than the book, which seems just to be an introduction to the characters.

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