House of Robots: Robots Go Wild! is a 2015 children's novel by James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein. It's a sequel to House of Robots.
Life goes on in the Hayes-Rodriguez household since E's introduction to it. Sammy's mom is still building some new robot (in fact, she recently added a Robot Butler to their robot family), his dad is still writing Hot & Sour Ninja Robots (until the publishing company cancels his contract, that is), and Maddie is still unable to leave her room due to SCID
. However, now Maddie is able to finally attend school by sending E in her place, and using him as her eyes and ears in the school building. So yeah, things are good for the Hayes-Rodriguezes...
Until a newer, cooler robot starts attending classes. Developed by Dr. Ignatius Ingalls (whom Sammy's mom knew as "Icky" back in school), the new robot, Substitute Student 10,000 (or SS-10K for short) is attending the school on the behalf of his son, the also-bedridden (due to an accident) Frederick Ignalls, and soon, E doesn't seem so impressive anymore.
Things get worse when, one day, seemingly for no reason, E malfunctions and goes on a rampage across town. SS-10K manages to come along and put an end to it, but it all gets caught on the media, turning the town against the Hayes-Rodriguez family. What's Sammy to do?
The book was published on November 23rd, 2015. The book has a sequel, House of Robots: Robot Revolution.
House of Robots: Robots Go Wild! contains examples of:
- Affably Evil: Eddie is cocky, but he's more neutral than outright bad and is polite towards Sammy and E instead of bullying them.
- Alliterative Name: A couple of characters introduced in the book:
- Penelope Pettigrew
- Ignatius "Iggy" Ignalls
- Alpha Bitch: Sammy jokes about how Penelope is training to be one in middle school because of how mean she is.
- Big Game: Sammy has Notre Dame set up one between his mom's robots and Dr. Ignalls'. If Professor Hayes' robots win, Professor Hayes keeps her job as head of the Robotics class. If Dr. Ignalls' win, he'll be taking over that position.
- The Bully:
- Penelope is very nasty and selfish, and goes out of her way to make Maddie sad purely because she's jealous of Maddie getting more attention than her.
- Jacob Gorski becomes Sammy's new bully in this book, since Cooper Elliot was expelled for his actions in the previous one. He turns into a Reformed Bully in the end.
- The Dog Bites Back: Maddie scolds Penelope during the football game when she tried to short-circuit E by pouring liquid on him.
- Easily Forgiven: Maddie doesn't hold a grudge towards Penelope for bullying her in the end, and even hopes that they'll be friends after they work out their differences.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Sammy realizes how bad the situation gets for his family due to the PR nightmare caused by E's rampage when...
- Maddie, who's usually quite chipper, and eager to go to school, is tearing up and denouncing it.
- Sammy's parents, who are always quite lovey-dovey, actually have a fight.
- Precocious Crush: Penelope towards Eddie, as he's the only one she's not mean towards. When Eddie tells her to move out of the way in order for him and SS-10K to walk by, Penelope agrees and giggles as she leaves.
- Proj Egg Tile: E ends up throwing tons of eggs during his malfunction.
- Robot Names: The robot built by Dr. Ignalls is SS-10K.
- Sabotage to Discredit: Phase one of Dr. Ignalls' plan was to have SS-10K infect E with a computer virus that would make him go berserk in a public place, making Sammy's mom look bad, and threaten her position as head of the Robotics class at Notre Dame College.
- Spotting the Thread: Sammy notices that Eddie keeps getting his brother's name wrong, to which Eddie keeps coming up with various excuses (middle name, nickname, etc.). This is because Freddie isn't real, but just an excuse to get SS-10K close to E and sabotage him.
- Too Upset to Create: After having his contract with the comic publishing company cancelled, Sammy's dad just spends his days staring at his writing desk, not able to come up with anything.
- Wingding Eyes: E has swirls in his eyes in most of the illustrations of his rampage.
