Helen Fox

Helen Fox writes children’s science fiction that turns technological change into questions about character and responsibility. Eager is set near the end of the twenty-first century, when robots perform much of society’s work. The Bell family receives an experimental learning robot named EGR3 after their old mechanical helper begins to fail. As Eager observes the family and encounters more advanced machines, the story asks what intelligence, emotion, and independent judgment mean. The British first edition came from Hodder Children’s Books, while Wendy Lamb Books issued the novel in the United States. Fox continued the sequence with Eager’s Nephew and Eager and the Mermaid.