“Every morning Lilliput 5357 wound up his motor and marched out to play. But then one morning … BIG robots with BAD attitudes showed up.” And we’re off – on a manic, eye-popping adventure by well-known B.C. author and illustrator Stefan Czernecki that is the literary and visual equivalent of a sugar high.

Lilliput 5357, as the book’s inside cover tells us, was a little Japanese windup toy robot – the first of its kind. He’s a boxy, cube-headed tin man with a windup key in his side and a frozen expression of permanent alarm on his face. All Lilliput 5357 wants to do is play with his other tin-robot friends, but after those bullies show up and wreck everything, he must find new stomping grounds. He zooms off in his rocket racer but ends up in the middle of a traffic jam, a garbage dump, a carnival, and a land made entirely of gooey desserts. All of this he finds disagreeable (“Too noisy!” “Too stinky!” “Too spooky!” and so on), until a couple of “friendly Astro Guys” point him in the direction of a planet full of amiable robots who love to play.

Czernecki has created a universe populated almost exclusively by tin toys, which are photographed against a stark white background. He positions his little characters in ways that suggest they’re always in motion, playing up their colourful glossy exteriors and absurd accessories to create a visual cacophony. The occasional Japanese word floating above or behind the action just adds to the din.

Lilliput 5357 isn’t exactly going to stimluate a lot of deep thought in its young readers. Even on its own terms, the story’s a little thin. As mere eye candy, however, it’s a treat.