Eve L. Ewing’s Maya and the Robot (2021) is an illustrated middle grade novel that follows Maya, a fifth-grade girl who feels distanced from her best friends when they are put in different classes for the first time. To help deal with her overwhelming emotions, she puts all her energy into fixing a robot named Ralph. This coming-of-age experience teaches her a lot about herself and drastically improves her sense of self-worth, which in turn makes her a better friend. The novel explores themes such as The Difficulties of Childhood Friendship, The Ethical Use of Robots and Artificial Intelligence, and The Joys of Scientific Discovery. Through the novel, the author also supports the importance of encouraging diversity and representation in S.T.E.M. fields. While Ewing has published several other works—she is an accomplished journalist, academic, poet, and educator—Maya and the Robot is her first middle grade novel. It was critically well-received, and she has since gone on to co-write Colin Kaepernick’s graphic memoir, Colin Kaepernick: Change the Game, and in 2023, she became the first Black female author of the Black Panther series for Marvel.

This guide refers to the 2021 Kokila eBook version of the text.

Plot Summary

Maya Robinson is a fifth-grade girl from Chicago starting a new school year. She is a strong student who especially loves science, and she is eager to see her best friends, Jada and MJ, after being separated for much of the summer. However, things quickly turn south when she arrives at school and learns that she has been placed in a different class than her friends. To make matters worse, Maya is in Ms. Rodriguez’s class—the strictest teacher in the school.

Her first day is even worse than she expects it to be. Her new teacher calls her by the wrong name, which she is too shy to correct. She then learns that she doesn’t even have the same recess as MJ and Jada. By the end of the first week, she feels completely defeated, and she accepts that she will need to make new friends, though the idea of this makes her anxious.

Next to Maya’s apartment building is a corner store called Mac’s Everything Store, and Maya occasionally works for the kind of and helpful owner, Mr. Mac. One evening, while helping him clean out a storage closet, she discovers a robot designed by Mr. Mac’s son, Christopher. Mr. Mac is evasive when talking about Christopher, but reveals that Christopher went to Stanford to study engineering. The robot’s name is Ralph and doesn’t turn on in its current state, but Mr. Mac allows Maya to take the robot home and even gives her Christopher’s old notebook to see if she can get it working.

The next week, Maya finds it difficult to focus on school because all she can think about is getting home so she can dig into Christopher’s notebook and tinker with Ralph. The one thing that gets her attention is the revelation that she will be able to participate in the school’s science fair this year, and she is eager to show everyone what a great scientist she is. That night, she is finally able to start working on Ralph. She learns a lot from Christopher’s notebook, but she also realizes that it is going to take some work to get the robot up and running. The biggest issue is finding a power source. The notebook mentions a triple-Z battery, but Maya has no idea what this is or where to find one.

That weekend, Maya goes to the museum with her aunt. There is an exhibit called The Power of Power. When a museum employee does a demonstration on batteries, Maya answers all his questions and earns a prize. She asks the presenter if he has heard of a triple-Z battery. He reveals that the museum not only has one, but recently ordered a replacement, so she can have the old one. That night, with her new battery in hand, Maya finally figures out how to boot Ralph up for the first time. After going through the activation sequence, Ralph explains that he responds only after the activation keyword “Ralph” is used—this ensures he only responds to commands and not background noise. Maya is extremely excited about her achievement, but she feels sad when she thinks about telling Jada and MJ because she worries they won’t care.

Maya teaches Ralph how to help with things like cleaning up, taking out the garbage, folding laundry, and grocery shopping. While looking over Christopher’s notes again, she realizes that he designed Ralph to help people in need and begins to add her own ideas about how he could help people. When she goes to show Ralph to Mr. Mac, he isn’t surprised she got him working, but begins to cry because of how much she reminds him of Christopher and how proud he feels of Maya.

Things get tougher at school the next week. Maya’s mom refuses to let her take Ralph to school, and when she gets there, Jada and MJ aren’t in their usual meeting spot. Instead, they’re talking to kids from their new class, and Maya feels too anxious to go and join them. She pretends to read her book to distract herself, but she can hear a girl from her class, Zoe Winters, laughing at her from nearby. A boy from her class, Elijah, attempts to talk to her, but Maya responds to him harshly. Later, she regrets treating him this way and thinks that he did seem both nice and interesting.

The next week, when Maya’s dad picks her up from school, he tells her that instead of their usual plans, they are going to go to a special event at Mr. Mac’s store. He seems very solemn, and when she asks him about Christopher, he reveals that Christopher passed away some years before, and the event they’re going to is his memorial service. At the service, Christopher’s best friend speaks and explains how he was shot and killed leaving his father’s store 10 years ago. Mr. Mac closes the ceremony by speaking from the heart. He looks at Maya frequently throughout his speech, and when he is done, he thanks her for reconnecting him with the memory of his son.

Maya’s mom agrees to let her bring Ralph to school to help set up her science project for the science fair, which is a volcano connected to a heart rate monitor. Inspired by the difficult emotions she has been dealing with all year, her idea is that she will ask students a series of increasingly difficult math questions, and as their stress level increases, the volcano will erupt. Zoe Winters sees Maya enter with Ralph and assumes it is her science fair project. She pretends to be nice to Maya and convinces her to leave her station to get a drink. While Maya is gone, Zoe restarts Ralph, which disables his activation keyword. In the chaos of the science fair, Ralph mishears some people shouting and starts a food fight, which makes a huge mess and destroys a number of projects, including her own and Jada’s.

Maya is brought to the principal’s office, but before the principal can call her parents, Jada, MJ, and Elijah burst into the room. They claim to have seen everything and they explain Zoe’s role in Ralph’s mishap. Zoe is brought down to the office and reveals that the reason she has been bullying Maya is because she wants to be her friend but felt that Maya never wanted to talk to her. Back in the cafeteria, Jada and MJ ask why Maya never told them about Ralph, and she explains how she has been feeling emotionally overwhelmed and lonely since they were put in different classes. They reveal that they thought she was too busy for them, since she hadn’t been hanging out with them. They make plans to hang out on the weekend, and Jada suggests that Maya invite Elijah as well.

While they clean up the mess in the cafeteria, a first grade girl asks Maya about Ralph. She begins to explain everything she learned and had to do to get him running again. She speaks confidently and passionately, and by the time she has finished, a small audience has gathered around her, including her teacher, Ms. Rodriguez. Ms. Rodriguez apologizes for getting Maya’s name wrong up until this point and compliments her achievement with Ralph. She agrees to count Ralph as Maya’s science fair project since her other one was destroyed, and Maya ends the day feeling like a real scientist and having been reunited with her friends.