Eager

Helen Fox (author)

Hodder Children's Books, UK: 2003; 298pp

ISBN: 0340875836

Genre: science fiction

Issues: friendship, identity, values

 In a future world where robots relieve humans of almost all tasks, up to and including minding the baby, EGR3 is an experiment. Other robots are programmed how to behave. EGR3 is built to learn from his experience - he can choose what to do.

When placed with the Bell family, Eager, as they christen him, finds that learning things in the real world is very different to the virtual situations he has experienced to this point.

This results in some very funny situations as Eager learns, for example, that putting the baby in the washing machine is not the best solution to an accident with a jam tart. When the elegant new BDC4s are released onto the market, Eager hopes that he has found others like himself who are seeking to understand human nature, to become ‘more human'. Unfortunately it seems that the BDC4s weren't planned as carefully as they might have been and some sinister occurrences seem to be placing his family in danger. What is Eager to do? And will his new family help him? With a similar feel to Bicentennial Man (the movie), this is a whimsical sci-fi adventure for young readers.

The twist in the tail of this story makes it interesting but in many ways weakens what could have been a more complex conclusion. The writer has created a world that has made some attempt to find a solution to fuel consumption, wastage, world-wide poverty and starvation but without really showing how that was achieved. The robots and other advanced technology, along with reduced consumption and living/working locally seems to have been the solution but there is no real effort to explain how this was achieved. There is also inconstancy in this underlying thesis, as a serious concern about the increasing power and dominance of the ‘technocrats' is left completely unresolved - even unmentioned - in the conclusion, which tends towards a rather unrealistic ‘happily ever after'.

Although probably appropriate to read aloud to nine years and above, older readers are likely to become impatient with the number of incomplete narrative lines. Eager, however, is a delightful character who will appeal to all readers.