Two-time Newbery Medalist Erin Entrada Kelly (Hello, Universe; The First State of Being) creates a gripping, futuristic survival novel in The Second Life of Snap, in which 12-year-old Zuzu is the reluctant owner of a wildly optimistic robot whose dying battery cannot be recharged.
Zuzu Santos, her father, and three other families live in "the remote flatlands of Barren, Texas" in ramshackle trailers that comprise Subsidized Camp Five. While Zuzu's and her friends' parents go to work at Lockwood Corporation, the children attend school (where teachers are monitored by drones) and play unattended. When Zuzu's father is fired from his job and given an old model guardian robot with a broken charging cable as "a parting gift," Zuzu wants nothing to do with it. But her friend Elias accidentally overrides something in the "Secure Network Android Processor" (Snap) when he attaches his homemade tablet to the wiring. Suddenly Snap has thoughts and impulses of his own. As Zuzu realizes the new Snap is sentient, she knows she must find a way to save him.
Zuzu and her friends inhabit a world that is both foreign and similar to our own. Like many children, they battle with local bullies and make up storytelling games. They also live on a planet where climate change has devastated the land, and a corporation wields seemingly endless control over the people. While Kelly doesn't quite clarify why Zuzu would be predisposed to dislike robots, she certainly gives Snap depth and sends her characters on an immense adventure. The Second Life of Snap is a great read-alike for Peter Brown's The Wild Robot series or Jasmine Warga's A Rover's Story. --Kyla Paterno, freelance reviewer