Eager — Helen Fox

Am I human? Am I a machine? Well, I'm Eager.

It's the end of the twenty-first century. Technocrats rule, and robots take care of humans' every need. Your house watches you, knows your secrets, and talks to you. And your closest friend can be -- a machine?

Gavin Bell and his teenage sister, Fleur, live in a middle-class family. Their much-loved, old-fashioned robot Grumps is running down and can't be repaired, so a scientist friend loans them a brand-new, experimental robot to help Grumps out. EGR3, known as Eager, learns from his experiences, as a child would. Eager feels emotions: wonder, excitement, and loss. When the ultra-high-tech, eerily human BDC4 robots begin to behave suspiciously, Eager and the Bells are drawn into a great adventure -- one that is sometimes funny and often frightening. As Eager's extraordinary abilities are tested to the limit, he tries to find the answer to this question: What does it mean to be alive?