“Always chipper, cheerful, and sweet, Libby™ makes the perfect friend,” says the packaging for “Libby,” an A.I.Cademy Girl™ social robot designed to be a companion for girls ages 8 to 12 (accessories sold separately). Libbies are one of several personality types created by the Minerva Social Computing corporation. Wendys are smart. Robins are sporty. Noras are artistic. Izzies want to make the world better. (Think American Girl dolls, but robotic.) To promote the product line, there’s even an accompanying television show.
Libby Maxwell, or “Max,” doesn’t feel like a Libby, however. Max knows she’s not like the other Libbies in her Mars community, where a group of A.I.Cademy Girls have been sent to test things out before the humans move in. She also doesn’t feel exactly like any of the other A.I.Cademy Girl models—and is even making friends with a Roxanne, the “mean girl” of the set.
As she tries to figure out what she really is, she uncovers secrets about her own programming—and about the corporation’s ultimate plans for the A.I.Cademy Girls. Max must lean into her uniqueness while also reaching out to the A.I.Cademy Girls around her in order to save them all.
While the story hits many of the expected beats of middle grade novels, with themes of friendship and finding oneself, the original, well-imagined plot and setting make it a breath of fresh air. And while there aren’t any explicitly queer characters, Max’s feelings about not fitting into her “box” and being more than one defined thing have obvious queer overtones, especially given that author Steph Cherrywell is themself nonbinary. “You can’t just make up new model types whenever you want and expect other people to pretend they’re real,” one character tells another at one point—a clear echo of much of the rhetoric against recognizing gender diversity. And at least two characters have queer-coded haircuts.
Cherrywell smartly avoids making the whole plot an allegory about a nonbinary person’s discovery of their gender identity, however; such allegories of queer identities are only ever approximations at best. They instead embed this thread into a broader look at what makes any person an individual and weave in messages about corporate bureaucracy and greed, socioeconomic privilege, and more, making the story richer and more nuanced. Cherrywell themself said in an interview at Nerdy Book Club, “The premise could be taken as an allegory for a lot of different things, and I hope it’s one that resonates with readers of all kinds. There is a specific personal element I drew on in the writing, though, and it’s gender identity.” (I’m tagging the book as having a nonbinary character, since that feels closest to how Max expresses her identity and I want readers seeking such representation to find this title, even though the term isn’t used and Max uses she/her pronouns.)
Details about the AI technology and the infrastructure of the Mars colony are interesting and believable, but Cherrywell never lets technical details overwhelm the narrative. Interstitial marketing blurbs and snippets of dialog from the A.I.Cademy Girls show add humor as well as insight into the characters. All in all, it’s a delightful combination making for a fun and highly recommended read.
Max is White (“Shade 4 (Cornsilk)”) while other characters have a variety of skin tones.
