COG by Greg Van Eekhout is a juvenile fiction book probably best for grades 3-5.
What do you get when a trashbot, a robot dog, and two extremely lifelike automatons steal a smart car? Five allies on a mission with very little real world experiences.
Cog looks like your everyday twelve-year-old, except that his name stands for “Cognitive Development” and he’s a robot built to learn. When a “bad experience” leaves him injured and unconscious, Cog wakes up separated from the only human he has ever known. Now the scientists at UNImind want to take out his brain and study him and Cog thinks this is a very bad idea.
Along with some unusual allies, Cog breaks out of UNImind in search of his creator, Gina. But little does he know, that he is the cog that keeps the wheels turning and the hunt is on for him and his friends.
Will Cog find Gina? And will he escape UNImind’s nefarious clutches?
This is one of the unlimited e-checkouts from my library at the moment and with a name that stands for cognitive development, I thought it would be perfect for my 4-6th grade book club.
This is a quick read and even with the computer/tech talk, it is a fairly easy read too. This was perfect for me because I wanted to give my kids something a little easier than our last book. At first, I didn’t really find the characters in this book to be very dynamic but they do grow–the learn–as the story progresses. And there is a “bigger” goal than just finding Ginny by the end, which I think is important to the story.
I enjoy how Cog learns both by observation, reading and by “making mistakes.” This was very realistic to me and made Cog more human. Throughout the story, he learns what friendship and family is; he learns self preservation and even the difference between good and evil. All in all a good, lighter read, that still had some action in it.
This one gets 4 stars from me. It wasn’t stellar but it wasn’t bad either.
That’s all for now!
-M-
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