5 Books Featuring…Robots!

Tin Men? Metallic Humans? At any rate, the heroes in these books aren’t exactly flesh and blood…but they are friends with humans. But what makes somoene human? Is it their body, or is it their personality and sense of self? As you join these adventures with these human and not-human friends, you’ll have to decide–which one is the hero? If you like books featuring adventures and figuring out what is human…this booklist is for you!

Our Five Books feature is a booklist of five books (occasionally with a few extras) on a specific topic, with a short synopsis so you can decide if it sounds like something you would like. Five Books–One Old, One New, One Popular with Kids, One Well-Reviewed, and One Favorite. (But you’ll have to guess which is which)! And if there are more than five…it’s anyone’s guess why they’re all there!

But now…on with the metal magic!

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Fuzzy by Tom Angleberger
When Max – Maxine Zelaster – befriends her new robot classmate Fuzzy, part of Vanguard One Middle School’s new Robot Integration Program, she helps him learn everything he needs to know about surviving middle school – the good, the bad, and the really, really, ugly. Little do they know that surviving seventh grade is going to become a true matter of life and death. Because Vanguard has an evil presence at its heart: a digital student evaluation system named BARBARA that might be taking its mission to shape the perfect student to extremes!

The Last Human by Lee Bacon
In the future, robots have eliminated humans, and 12-year-old robot XR_935 is just fine with that. Without humans around, there is no war, no pollution, no crime. Every member of society has a purpose. Everything runs smoothly and efficiently. Until the day XR discovers something impossible: a human girl named Emma. Now, Emma must embark on a dangerous voyage with XR and two other robots in search of a mysterious point on a map. But how will they survive in a place where rules are never broken and humans aren’t supposed to exist? And what will they find at the end of their journey? A humorous, action-packed story about friendship, technology, and challenging the status quo no matter the consequences. It’s not just about what it means to be a robot–it’s about what it means to be a friend.

Andy Buckram’s Tin Men by Carol Ryrie Brink
Andy’s imagination (and his Popular Mechanics collection) leads him to builds four tin men from scraps of metal. Campbell is ferocious looking, but actually just a big, cute baby. Bucket was created to do the chores that Andy hates. Lily Belle was created because Andy’s friend Sparrow needed a friend. And the fourth tin man? He’s to help Andy with the leaky rowboat he uses to get between jobs to pay for all his ten men. All four robots help him with the farm work and other jobs, as well as being his companions. But when flood waters overrun his small farm, Andy, his baby cousin Dot, and all four robots are swept down the river. No one would have ever dreamed of the heroic services the robots will perform in an emergency to save Andy, Dot, Sparrow and each other.

The Wild Robot by Peter Brown
When robot Roz opens her eyes for the first time, she discovers that she is all alone on a remote, wild island. She has no idea how she got there or what her purpose is–but she knows she needs to survive. After battling a violent storm and escaping a vicious bear attack, she realizes that her only hope for survival is to adapt to her surroundings and learn from the island’s unwelcoming animal inhabitants.
As Roz slowly befriends the animals, the island starts to feel like home–until, one day, the robot’s mysterious past comes back to haunt her.
Don’t miss The Wild Robot Escapes, the sequel!

Eager by Helen Fox
It’s the end of the 21st century where technocrats rule and robots take care of humans’ every need. Your house watches you, knows your secrets, and talks to you. And your closest friend can be—a machine? Gavin Bell and his sister Fleur come from a middle-class family. Their much-loved, old-fashioned robot, Grumps, is running down and can’t be repaired, so a scientist friend loans them EGR3, an experimental new robot to help Grumps. EGR3, known as Eager, learns from his experiences, as a child would. He feels emotions—wonder, excitement, and loss. When the ultra high-tech, eerily human BDC4 robots begin to behave suspiciously, Eager and the Bells are drawn into a great adventure. As Eager’s extraordinary abilities are tested to the limit, he will try to find the answer to this question: What does it mean to be alive?

Tin by Padraig Kenny
Christopher is ‘Proper’: a real boy with a real soul, orphaned in a fire. He works for an engineer, a maker of the eccentric, loyal and totally individual mechanicals who are Christopher’s best friends. But after a devastating accident, a secret is revealed and Christopher’s world is changed forever… What follows is a remarkable adventure, as Christopher discovers who he really is, and what it means to be human.

Cog by Greg Van Eekhout
Cog looks like a normal twelve-year-old boy. But his name is short for “cognitive development,” and he was built to learn. But after an accident leaves him damaged, Cog wakes up in an unknown lab–and Gina, the scientist who created and cared for him, is nowhere to be found. Surrounded by scientists who want to study him and remove his brain, Cog recruits four robot accomplices for a mission to find her.
The journey that Cog, ADA, Proto, Trashbot, and Car take will likely involve much cognitive development in the form of mistakes, but Cog is willing to risk everything to find his way back to Gina.

Friendroid by M.M. Vaughan
Danny’s a kid. Eric’s a kid, too. They’re on the way to being best friends, until they hit a snag. 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.

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So there you have it. Five…(okay, eight)…stories of dangerous situations, daring rescues, and friendships that will last forever.

It almost makes you want to go out and build a friend!

I haven’t read every one of these books, but now I plan to! And I hope you will as well. There were a couple books that I would have loved to add, but we don’t own them anymore. If you can find them at another library, or maybe in your parents’ old collections of their childhood favorites, maybe you could try those books too: My Robot Buddy, by Alfred Slote and Conrad by Christine Nostlinger. Both fun reads from long ago…

If you need help finding these or any other books, just ask one of our librarians when you call or visit the library. We’ll look forward to seeing you!

Happy Reading!
::kelly::