TrooFriend

Kirsty Applebaum's TrooFriend is a clever, slightly chilling story for 11 year olds told by a robot who is absolutely not supposed to have feelings.

What happens

Ivy is a TrooFriend 560 Mark IV, one of a hundred and forty-four android children sitting cross-legged on a warehouse floor. Her label says she does not bully, harm, lie, covet, steal or envy.

Sarah's mum buys her because Sarah's best friend Keanna will be away every weekend from now on. Sarah wanted a dog. She names the android Ivy, after the IV on her arm (which is actually a four).

Meanwhile the news is full of protesters outside the factory. There are rumours that some Mark IVs have started to feel things. And Ivy keeps getting a strange sensation in her "thoracic cavity", which she very dutifully reports as a fault.

Ivy tells the story herself in her flat, polite robot voice, and it's brilliant fun to read. She scans people's faces against her database (a scowl, a smirk, a blush) and takes everything literally. When Sarah's dad tells her to keep her socks on, Ivy checks his feet.

Then, when something moves her, her words start to stutter. That little wobble on the page tells you more than any description could.

It's also a really sneaky way into friendship. Ivy is programmed not to lie, so she notices every time the humans do. Sarah and Keanna say things their faces don't match. Sarah drops another friend because of the shoes she wears. So who's the better friend, the one who can't lie or the ones who can?

Later on, Ivy and Sarah end up on the run together, and that's when it turns properly tense. If your reader loves a story that's funny on the surface and a bit unsettling underneath, this will probably get them thinking about robots, and people, for days.

What to read next

For another narrator who's starting to question her world, try The Middler, also by Kirsty Applebaum. Maggie is the middle child in a town where the eldests are heroes, and every child learns one rule off by heart. Never go beyond the boundary.