FRRED

In Cricket’s middle-grade novel, a young English boy is sent to live with the American father he’s never known and finds himself immersed military intrigue.

After Kai Flynn’s mother dies, he’s raised by his Gran in London; when she checks herself into a “looney bin,” he has no choice but to decamp for the United States to live with his father, United States Air Force Sgt. Steven Flynn. They don’t exactly hit it off—Steven is imperiously authoritarian and all but immediately forces Kai to shear his unruly hair, and Kai is a peace-loving vegetarian, an incongruence comically captured by the author. However, they do bond over robotics; Steven builds them for the military, and Kai takes to constructing one of his own for a school project in a sweet homage to his “warrior dad.” Kai receives a package from someone named Fred—he doesn’t know anyone by that name—containing a USB flash drive that, when plugged into his computer, brings his rudimentary robot to vivid, talking life. Shortly after, Steven vanishes, and the scared boy is interrogated by the FBI and informed that Sgt. Flynn is AWOL. Joined by his friends Sandy and Carlos, Kai discovers that Fred is really “FRRED,” an acronym for Federal Rapid Response Electronic Defense, a semi-autonomous military weapon equipped with advanced machine-learning capabilities. The author here artfully combines a youthful adventure story (and a very funny one at that) with a tale of political malfeasance. Cricket deftly navigates familial drama and thrilling espionage beats as the youthful trio try to track down Kai’s father (who is, in essence, also FRRED’s dad). FRRED the robot is exuberantly unhinged, a machine tired of being reduced to his programming. (“I only want to be free to be me. Isn’t that what everyone wants?”) Young readers, and their parents, will delight in this lightsome but thoughtful yarn.

A thoroughly enjoyable and exceedingly intelligent novel.