Read Indigo Island free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Susan Moore's Indigo Island is a high-tech treasure hunt for 11 year olds about a girl racing across a futuristic San Francisco to find an ancient sword.
Nat Walker is fourteen, heiress to a huge gaming company, and she'd far sooner be on her boat than on a private jet. Her best friend is Fizz, a robot dragon her dad built to switch on the moment she was born. Her parents died years ago, and the trail they left for her runs through a game her dad made.
This time she's hunting for Gan Jiang, a sword hidden somewhere in the city where her mum grew up. All she has is one line in her mum's handwriting. And she isn't the only one looking.
Just getting out of the hotel is half the battle. Aunt Vera wants her in one of her own stripy dresses and on her best behaviour at the swankiest hotel in town. There's a brand-new butler who's half android and half racehorse, too, and Fizz does NOT trust him.
Fizz is the best thing in it. He's bossy and very literal, and he lectures Nat about her teenage brain seconds after she nearly hits a truck. Then he tells her he's lied for her "out of love", and it's a surprisingly lovely moment.
The world is great fun. Cowboy fashion, Slider boards with their own lanes, a raccoon robot driving the taxi and a makeover done by a dragon in an aeroplane loo!
Some chapters follow a boy called Zixin, though, and they're much darker. His grandad has had his own head fixed onto a robot eagle's body. He has a speaker put into Zixin's ear without asking, takes away his robot snake and threatens to turn him into a hybrid too. It's more creepy than violent, but a sensitive reader might find those pages unsettling.
This is the third book about Nat and Fizz, and it leans on what happened before, so it's best read after the others. Emerald Secret, the book before this one, is in the library too.
If your reader loves the robot side of things, they might like Kirsty Applebaum's TrooFriend. It's told by an android who's sold as the perfect friend to a girl who really wanted a dog.
A library hand-picked by an English teacher, delivered through a calm, ad-free app. If your child already loves reading, we keep up.
7-day free trial. Then £7.99/month.
