48 pages • 1 hour read
Eve L. Ewing, Illustr. Christine AlmedaMaya and the Robot
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Worst Science Fair Ever”
Outside it is a perfectly normal day, but inside, the school cafeteria is in complete chaos. As Maya tries to keep calm, she notices Zoe Winters—the most popular girl in her class—screaming because she and her science project are covered in chocolate pudding. Maya attempts to help Zoe but is blocked by cans of creamed corn that are being launched across the room. A scared kindergartener tries to flee but ends up slipping on the mixture of corn and pudding that now coats the floor. Trying to prevent herself from falling, she grabs and upends a nearby table that was displaying a scale model of a suspension bridge made by Maya’s best friend, Jada. The model is destroyed, and Jada begins to cry.
Teachers unsuccessfully try to gain control of the situation, and Maya reveals that the cause of the mayhem is her robot uncontrollably launching food out of industrial sized vats at the center of the room. The school principal approaches Maya to tell her that she is in big trouble. Before Maya can respond, she is smacked in the face by a glob of flying pudding. She explains that she is not a troublemaker and never meant for any of this to happen. If the year had gone the way she wanted, she never would’ve ended up with a robot or in this situation. To end the chapter, she claims that it all started on the first day of school.
Chapter 2 Summary: “The First Day”
The narrative flashes back to the first day of the school year. Maya is dreaming about pancakes when she is woken up by her mother. It’s the first day of school, and her mom—despite working two jobs and taking care of Maya and her brother—is full of energy and wants her out the door on time. She has picked up an extra shift at work and won’t be able to drop Maya off if Maya misses the bus. At the school playground, Maya immediately heads to meet her best friends, Jada and MJ. She didn’t get to see them much throughout the summer because they live in different parts of the city, and she is eager to be with them again during the school year. She finds them by the basketball court, watching the older kids play. Maya and MJ like to watch, but Jada can’t wait until she is old enough to play. MJ is teased about being named after Michael Jordan despite being small and not very good at basketball, but his friends stand up for him.
After properly greeting one another, the three friends begin to discuss the upcoming school year. Maya expresses some anxiety about being in Ms. Rodriguez’s class since she is rumored to be the strictest teacher in the school. This makes Jada and MJ look uneasy, and they reveal that they each received a letter explaining that they had been moved to Ms. Montgomery’s class. They had assumed Maya was going to be moved as well, and they are just as surprised to learn they’ll be separated for the first time. Maya understands but has a hard time accepting this new reality. Things are made even harder by the fact that Ms. Montgomery has the reputation of being the coolest and most fun teacher in the school, making Maya feel even more left out. Jada and MJ unsuccessfully try to comfort Maya until they are interrupted by the school bell. They then join the group of excited kids lining up for Ms. Montgomery, while Maya fearfully heads towards a stern looking Ms. Rodriguez.
Chapter 3 Summary: “The Perfect Friend”
Maya’s day turns out to be even worse than she expected it to be. Ms. Rodriguez arranges the desks in her room in single-file rows and seats everyone alphabetically. She spends the day giving commands and cold calling on students when nobody volunteers an answer. At one point, Maya finds herself being called on to answer a math question; however, Ms. Rodriguez calls on her using her first name, Patricia, not her middle name, Maya, which she has always gone by. Maya knows she should politely correct her new teacher but freezes out of fear. Eventually, she just answers the question, and the class moves on. For the rest of the day, Maya feels embarrassed and ashamed for not correcting Ms. Rodriquez about her name.
Dejected, Maya can’t wait to see Jada and MJ at recess to tell them about what happened. However, when she gets to the playground, her friends are nowhere to be seen. Principal Merriweather eventually informs her that Ms. Montgomery’s class have the second recess break, meaning she will have to go an entire year without seeing them during school hours. This pushes Maya over the edge, and she begins to cry. Principal Merriweather attempts to console her, but not wanting to be seen crying on the first day of school, Maya collects herself and spends the rest of recess pretending not to care. The next few days are similar, and by the end of the week, she feels completely defeated.
Maya realizes that something must change and that she will need a new friend to help get her through the year. As she considers the qualities that make a perfect friend—someone that generally agrees with her but can have interesting debates, someone who likes to do the things she does while also introducing her to new things, and someone who would always be by her side, no matter what—her mom interrupts to tell her that Mr. MacMillan had some work for her to do at the corner shop. She is finished with her homework already, so she excitedly heads out.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Kind of a Mess”
Mac’s Everything Store is right next to the apartment building Maya lives in and has been there for longer than she’s been alive. The store sells everything for everyone, from groceries and home hardware tools to school supplies, bus passes, and lottery tickets. He even makes keys, helps people handle their electricity bills, and sends mail. Maya loves the bustling, busy atmosphere of the store, and it is the only place she is allowed to go without adult supervision. It is her favorite place to hang out, and Mr. Mac sometimes pays her to help clean and organize the store.
When she enters the store, seeing Mr. Mac immediately makes Maya smile. She tries to avoid talking about her bad week, but when he asks her about school, he notices that something is wrong because she doesn’t reply with her usual enthusiasm. Maya explains the situation with her friends and new teacher, and Mr. Mac consoles her. He agrees that it is disappointing but reminds her that next week will be another chance for things to improve. He also assures her that while it might take time, she will make new friends because she is a great kid.
Mr. Mac then tells her that she reminds him of his son, Christopher. Maya is astonished to learn that he even has a son and realizes that despite how long she’s known Mr. Mac, she doesn’t know that much about him. Because he’s always worrying about other people’s problems, he doesn’t talk much about himself, and Maya feels guilty for never asking about his family. When she asks where his son is now, Mr. Mac frowns for a second before saying that he went away to engineering school in California. He then changes the subject by showing Maya her task for the day: organizing the storage closet.
The storage closet is a colossal mess, and Maya realizes it will take her longer than one shift to get it finished. As Maya works on organizing the boxes of old magazines, Terrance, a regular at the store, enters looking to buy milk and bananas. Mr. Mac apologizes that his bananas just came in and aren't ripe enough to sell yet. As Terrance is about to leave, Maya stops him and asks if he has any apples. She explains that putting unripe bananas in a plastic bag with some apples will ripen them by the morning because the apples give off ethylene gas. Terrance thanks her for the advice, and Maya heads back into the storage closet. She pulls a box of magazines off the shelf and screams when she sees a face staring back at her from behind where the box used to be.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
Ewing opens Maya and the Robot in medias res, or in the middle of the action, to place readers at the height of the conflict and grab their attention. The catastrophe of the science fair is a compelling, bombastic scene established as the climax readers can look forward to just before Ewing flashes back to the first day of school. Once Ewing shifts to the past, Maya’s experience on the first day of school—a completely normal first day for everyone else—is an internal disaster for Maya. She tries her best to maintain an image of outer calm and serenity, but by the end of the day, the change and uncertainty overwhelms her to the point of tears (another visual metaphor for inner turmoil is used later in the novel as well, when Maya reads a book about volcanos while trying not to react to emotions). While the climax of the food fight at the science fair is established as the peak external conflict of the novel, the sharp juxtapose of the internal conflict Maya experiences from day one allows readers to understand how this may grow and extend outside of Maya and to those around her.
In the second chapter, Maya passionately emphasizes how her friends are “the certified, record-breaking greatest friends in the solar system. Probably the galaxy” (17). She spends several pages describing all the creative and wonderful things they do together and explains how “They’re really open to trying something new, and even if they weren’t feeling it, they wouldn’t have laughed” (19). Primarily, this introduction sets things up to be even more impactful when she is separated from moments later, but it also hints at a big flaw in the way Maya thinks about friends. Because she sees her friendship with Jada and MJ as perfect, she finds it very difficult to believe anyone else will meet this standard. Moreover, as the above quote implies, a big part of what makes her friendship with them so great is that she feels safe and free from judgement. However, what she overlooks is that these perfect friendships were built over time. Her friendships took effort to build, as did the sense of security she feels with them. She now compares everyone else to them, and she doesn’t give people like Elijah—who clearly has things in common with her and is a kind boy looking for a friend—a chance.
The revelation that she will have to get through an entire school year without her best friends completely upends Maya’s world and her sense of stability. She shrinks into herself and completely closes off. This honest reaction to her sudden loneliness only further isolates her. In this way, Maya’s reaction to everything becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is later revealed that her friends interpret her behavior as a sign that she is too busy for them, and Zoe Winter reads it as Maya believing she is too good for everyone else. This separation offers the first example of The Difficulties of Childhood Friendships in Ewing’s novel. Maya has an extremely strong bond with her friend group and hasn’t recently needed to be independent in a school setting. This separation anxiety from close-knit friends is a common experience for children as they age, and Ewing centers this conflict as a major coming-of-age experience for middle-grade readers.
Given the uncertainty at school, Mr. Mac’s store becomes something of a safe space for Maya. When Maya enters the store for the first time, she immediately feels better and starts to work without even asking. This speaks to a level of comfort that comes from the combination of familiarity and Mr. Mac’s kindness. It is quickly clear that while he takes an interest in all his customers, he is especially fond of Maya. He knows her well enough to notice that she must have had a bad experience at school and to push her towards discovering (and then adopting) Ralph.
Through Maya’s conversation with Mr. Mac about Ralph, she learns about his son Christopher, which in turn leads to the realization that she never asks Mr. Mac about himself. This reinforces Ewing’s description of Maya’s personality thus far. Maya, though good intentioned, doesn’t have experience initiating the conversations associated with new relationships. While Maya is a kind, thoughtful, considerate person who does all she can to help people, she is also a child and has a lot to learn about friendships and connecting to other people. She makes mistakes in these opening chapters, but she also begins to recognize her own shortcomings, which sets her up to grow beyond her limitations and obstacles later in the novel.
