A Very Personal Computer — Justine Rendal

What if one day you were sitting in front of a computer and the impossible happened: it started communicating with you and actually offered to do your homework for you? Just when twelve year-old Pollard Gunning is giving up on almost everything -- eighth grade, the Red Sox, his lousy home life -- that's just what happens. And that's only the beginning. Next Pollard is learning how to be a dream batter -- and how to ask a girl out on a date. Suddenly, Pollard's mixed-up world takes a techno-turn and the "year of weird" also becomes the year a very personal computer comes to the rescue. Justine Rendal has written a fresh, funny, and moving novel about loss and love and unlikely friendships that shows how sometimes even the impossible can be wonderfully possible.

1996 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library)