Caroline Tinker and the Bot

Eight-year-old Caroline is back at it, this time trying to teach Bee to tell materials apart by touch, so it stops treating the couch cushions like dust rags. The tweak doesn't go smoothly: mid-chore, Bee mistakes the family collie, Gracie, for a floor mop, and though Caroline catches it before anything worse happens, the same glitch quietly wipes out Bee's flawless floor-cleaning routine, the one chore the household has come to count on completely.

A week of grimy kitchen floors later, Caroline's mother lays down the choice: revert Bee to how it worked before, or Caroline takes over the floors herself until the glitch is fixed. Sure she's only a couple of tweaks from a breakthrough, Caroline picks the floors and finds out fast that mopping every day while chasing a fix every night is a lot harder than it sounded.

Between a toddler brother whose "help" makes more mess, a dog who finds the mop bucket endlessly fascinating, and a robot that wants to help but can't, Caroline learns that being almost right isn't the same as being done; and that asking for help isn't giving up. Elbow Grease continues Caroline Tinker and the Bot, a heartfelt series about a Charleston girl, the robot she rebuilt, and the things you can only fix together.

Some things take more than elbow grease.