Book Review: A Rover's Story by Jasmine Warga (second review on BookGuide)

A Rover’s Story
by Jasmine Warga (j Warga)

A Rover’s Story is from the perspective of a Mars rover’s inner life as he is built and tested on Earth, then as he works on multiple missions on Mars. He can understand the humans around him, but they never realize he’s sentient; other technology is another matter. Several technological characters can chat with each other, all of them having some level of personal willpower beyond their programming.

A second perspective comes from the daughter of one of the engineers. Starting in middle grade and continuing through college, Sophia writes letters to the rover. Occasionally, another character will actually read the letters to him, but the point of this part of the narrative is to show the time taken for such a long mission and how it can affect a family that has their own terrestrial struggles to deal with.

This is cute, comforting story with occasional mild tension that should do good things for children’s interest in robotic solar system exploration.

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try The Wishtree by Katherine Applegate, or The Wild Robot by Peter Brown.)

Recommended by Garren H.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!