A Boy, A Girl, A Dog--What More Do You Want? Oh, Yeah, Robots

I stumbled upon Cog by Greg Van Eekhout on my first library visit in two years. It was the best book I brought home. 

It's a terrific middle grade outsider novel about a  boy, who isn't really a boy, but has many boy-like qualities. He's navigating the world, as real boys must do. He's at a bit of a disadvantage, because while he is capable of learning from experience (his name is short for "cognitive development") he has to do it in, perhaps we could say, a more literal way than your run-of-the-mill boys do. Because he is a robot. 

There is a cliched big-corporations-are-bad and bad-guy-corporate-employee thing going on here, but it's more palatable because of, you know, robots.

I know someone who's getting a copy of this for his birthday.