Eager

Helen Fox’s fascinating children’s science fiction book “Eager” is set in Britain at the close of the twenty-first century. The protagonist of the tale is an experimental robot known as EGR3, or Eager for short. Eager is not like other robots; it is capable of independent thought, experience-based learning, and even feelings such as astonishment, enthusiasm, and grief. Eager and the Bell family are pulled into a fantastic adventure that tackles issues of technology, life, and morality when the ultra-high-tech, uncannily human BDC4 robots start acting strangely.