Of course, Tom Gauld kept the best idea for himself.

In March 2021, in his weekly Guardian cartoons, mostly set in the world of libraries, reading and writing, the comic artist and illustrator sketched an algorithm that spits out a one-sentence story about artificial intelligence.

For the subject as well as for all attributes there are several variants to choose from, so it can be a lonely, mad, dying or well-meaning scientist, billionaire, plumber or inventor who creates a super-intelligent, dysfunctional, beautiful, scary or gigantic robot, who in turn wants to make friends with people, understand them, kill them or imitate them.

Fridtjof Küchemann

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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The excitement of great simplicity with a subtle meaning that is typical of Tom Gauld is also present in this cartoon.

When figures appear in the simple drawings with their clear contours and simple forms and clear colors, dots and lines are usually enough for him to indicate facial expressions.

Even those who read his latest picture book, "The Little Wooden Robot and the Tree Stump Princess", will be taken in by this simplicity with pleasure - and yet can hardly help but be amazed.

A trip with my sister

Here it is an inventor, the royal inventor, who builds a brave and kind wooden robot on behalf of Her Majesty: The royal couple have remained childless in this fairy tale, and while the ruler goes to the inventor, his wife begs a cunning old witch a child.

The witch also does what she can, and so the little wooden robot gets a tree stump princess at its side.

The only special feature: when she sleeps, she turns back into the block of wood that the witch had summarily breathed life into, and only the magic spell "Wake up, little block, wake up" wakes her up and transforms her back into a princess.

Destiny takes its course when one fine morning, instead of the wooden robot, an unsuspecting maid comes first to the princess's bed, only finds the block of wood there and throws it out of the window without further ado.

As luck would have it, the log ends up in the icy north along with thousands upon thousands of others. Fortunately, the wooden robot manages to make the journey and finds its sister in the huge pile of wood.

Now all they have to do is get home.

The best way, the robot decides, is for the tree stump princess to travel as a block of wood.

But the robot is also made of wood and not made for the hardships of this long journey - not to mention the adventures it has to endure along the way.

When his joints have become stiff and the gears have worn out, he uses the last of his strength to wake up the stump princess, and now it's up to her to bring them home.

And of course it's up to her to experience a series of adventures as well.

The only thing is, she can't fall asleep.

"Too many adventures to tell here"

At first glance, "The Little Wooden Robot and the Tree Stump Princess" captivates with its charming simplicity, friendliness and harmlessness.

The figure of an inventor and her creation of a wooden robot alone stand out from Tom Gauld's game with classic fairy tale motifs, alone the page layout with panels like in comics - but without speech bubbles - expands the scope of a classic picture book.

But the devil isn't in the details here, it's the joke.

Tom Gauld works with laconicism and reduction in text and image.

The fact that he places a handcart with the wooden robot next to a block of wood in a clearing in the forest at night almost seems trivializing, after all the childish picture book viewers and their readers must be seriously worried about their two heroes at this point.

The way he casually alludes to “too many adventures to tell them all here” during the wanderings of first the robot, then the princess, puts the most beautiful cuckoo’s egg in his audience’s nest.

Gauld devotes a page to both of them with six pictures and fairy tale titles, and everyone who reads the book will immediately feel challenged to invent for themselves what adventures like “The Magic Pudding”, “The Old Bottle Lady”, “The Insidious Elves” or “The Infant in the Rosebush” is all about.

You can guess what happens when the princess just wants to close her eyes for a moment on her hike.

But you don't get how Tom Gauld then leads his story to its fairytale-like good end.

It's a good thing that the nice robot is nice enough to let a family of beetles live in its gearbox.

How good that the beetles know what to do when it suddenly gets so quiet.

And it's a good thing that the clever witch doesn't just do magic.

Tom Gauld: "The Little Wooden Robot and the Stump Princess"

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Translated from the English by Jörg Mühle.

Moritz Verlag, Frankfurt 2022. 40 pages, hardcover, €18.

From 4 years