Children at Cranbury Elementary School in Norwalk met with a computer engineer Wednesday to learn about robots.

It was all part of this year's annual One School, One Book program - a national program in which schools choose a book to read and students get a free copy. This year, the school picked "The Wild Robot," so the school asked an engineer to speak with the kids.

Austin McChord, organizer of the National Havoc Robot League and co-founder of the nonprofit Manresa Island Corporation, spoke with the kids about his interest in robots. He told the kids that he was a bad student and only studied computers initially because his teachers couldn't read his handwriting. McChord said he eventually realized the power of computers.

"You can interact with the world, and you can create these machines, and they go on to do their own things and are such a big amplification of any idea that you have in your own mind," said McChord. "It's like huge and crazy powerful, and it's just so cool to see it realized."