By James Patterson, Chris Grabenstein
A boy whose mother builds robots for a living is made to take one to school as his brother, and it ruins his life until he finds out what it's really for.
Sammy's mother is a roboticist, so the house is full of robots. There's one that does the laundry, one that fusses, one that follows him around. Sammy has made peace with this. Then his mother sends her newest robot to school with him and tells him to call it his brother. It is beeping, boxy, mortifying, and it is now sitting next to him in class. Sammy nicknames it E for Error and spends most of the book trying to get rid of it. The reason E exists turns out to have nothing to do with Sammy, and everything to do with his little sister Maddie, who has never been allowed to go anywhere.
The wish-fulfillment is the point. Your child has imagined living in a house full of robots, and this book just lets them, in detail, for a whole first act. It's built for a reader who says thick books aren't for them: enormous print, chapters two or three pages long, a drawing every few spreads, and it goes down fast. Then it turns out to be about something, which your child will not see coming. The robot obsession is the door in; the sister is the room it opens into.