Friendroid
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
“[An] unrelentingly funny sc-fi story.” —BCCB (starred review)
Stranger Things meets robots in this sweet and “noteworthy” (Booklist) story about an unlikely friendship between two boys—one human, one android.
Danny’s a kid. Eric’s a kid, too. He’s also a robot, but he doesn’t know that.
For Danny, it becomes hard to ignore Eric’s super strange tendencies. He has weekly “dentist” appointments and parents who never stop smiling. It’s almost impossible to wake him up and he’s always getting fancy gifts from his mysterious uncle. Danny always assumed that Eric was just a spoiled rich kid…until he discovers Eric’s hidden robot reality.
As the two friends dig deeper into Eric’s origins and purpose, powerful forces swarm into town, and Danny and Eric are left with more questions than answers—and more danger than humanly possible.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Vaughan (Six) imparts sophisticated social commentary in this tale of friendship with a futuristic twist, told alternatively in the voice of 12-year-old Danny and in the journal entries of his friend Eric, nicknamed Slick. Danny immediately conveys that Slick is dead, having been murdered six months earlier, that Slick was an android, and that Danny is publishing his journals to lead to Slick's killers' capture. Slick mostly befriends popular kids when he moves to town, but he and Danny gradually bond over an online game, Land X, as well as Danny's work building a computer. Danny finds many aspects of Slick's life unsettlingly odd, from his perpetually smiling parents to his weekly dentist appointments and extreme sleep habits, but it still comes as a great surprise to both when they learn that Slick is a robot. The android's stilted dialogue adds to his convincing character portrayal, and his journal entries reveal obsessions with certain brands and Land X, both of which hint at the hidden agenda behind his creation. Along with expected messages about choosing friends wisely, Vaughan offers a critique of consumerism for middle-grade readers who are ready to fight the power. Ages 8 12.
