The School for Whatnots
by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Intermediate    Tegen/HarperCollins    304 pp.  g
3/22    978-0-06-283849-0    $17.99
e-book ed.  978-0-06-283851-3    $10.99

Wealthy Mrs. Sterling is determined that her son Maximilian grow up unspoiled, with friends who aren’t interested only in his money. So she makes sure that (unbeknownst to him) his childhood companions are all whatnots, “robots that look and act so much like humans that no one can tell the difference.” Maximilian’s first school friend, Josie, however, seems different. She shortens his name to Max and invites him to jump in mud puddles with her. She also has a secret. Unlike the other whatnots who remain in charging stations at night, Josie is a real girl, from a poor family, who lives covertly at the school in a little bedroom behind her charging station door. At the end of fifth grade, when Max is due to be transitioned away from whatnots to real human friends, Josie doesn’t want to be left behind. Her cryptic message to Max—“No matter what anyone tells you, I’m real”—kicks off an engaging mystery-adventure in which Max and Josie end up uncovering more than they’d bargained for about whatnots and the shadowy woman, Frances Miranda Gonzagaga, who invented them. Less a story about androids than one about children, friendship, and economic inequality, the narrative poses and solves a series of puzzles that leads to a Westing Game–style confrontation with Gonzagaga herself. And if the ending is a bit unrealistic, it fits in perfectly with the rest of this feel-good wish-fulfillment fantasy.

From the May/June 2022 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.