Booky Advent Calendar Day 18: Norton and Alpha by Kristyna Litten (Simon and Schuster Children's Books)

We're on Day 18 of our Booky Advent Calendar and though we've been straying away from festive books we're still dead set on bringing you brilliant books to stuff in a stocking...
...including this riotous robot romp. "Norton and Alpha" is the story of a lonely trashbot who spends his days wandering the wastelands filled with rubbish.

He's an extremely clever 'bot though, turning his hand to making amazing things out of the rubbish he finds. One day he manages to create something ultra-cool - a robot dog to act as his companion, and come scavenging with him.

Norton and Alpha are the best of friends but when they find something that even Norton doesn't understand or recognise, it's a whole new challenge. What is this odd object with petals and leaves?

It's beautiful so the two take it back to the workshop. Sadly the new object resists all attempts to fix it, and it seems to have lost a lot of its colour and lustre too, so Norton throws it out of the window!

But that's just the start of something amazing...for what happens to a flower full of seeds when it's discarded?

A joyous tale very much in the same mould as "Wall-E" and "The Flower" but with lots of brilliant characterful fun for Norton and his robot dog chum.

"Norton and Alpha" by Kristyna Litten is out on 9th February 2017, published by Simon and Schuster Children's Books (kindly supplied for review)