THE WILD ROBOT

What does a robot do when the only survival manual available is the island's own animals, none of whom want anything to do with her? That's Roz's situation in Peter Brown's novel, stranded alone on a wild island with no memory of how she got there, forced to teach herself to survive by watching creatures who mostly avoid her. The turn comes when Roz ends up caring for an orphaned gosling, which is the act that finally gets the other animals to help her instead of keeping their distance. Little, Brown publishes it in hardcover for ages 8 to 12.

The premise - a machine learning to survive in nature through raising an animal that isn't hers - gives the book room to ask bigger questions about identity and belonging without ever feeling like a lesson; a kid can read it purely as a survival-and-friendship story and still come away having thought about what makes something count as family. Brown treats the island's ecosystem with as much care as he treats Roz herself, so a kid drawn in by the robot premise gets just as much real animal-world detail in return. A mysterious thread about Roz's past keeps building underneath the island story, pulling the book toward its close.