The same with Toby's rebellion, both really feel softened and inconsequential. The plot is pretty basic, with the whole 'survive the Empty' taking up much less space and having much less drama than you'd think. Toby doesn't fit in to the school, and ORVIS doesn't fit in anywhere, so they both plot to escape to her great-grandmother's place. It's a science fiction tale about a girl named Toby who one day encounters a robot named ORVIS walking himself to the dump.

It's hard to see how this won so many awards. A more resilient pair could have brought the story to life without changing the basic plot. Toby and Thaddeus wander around waiting to be rescued and are often so sweet they deserved to be hijacked. While I am no longer a fan of rebellious teenagers, they have their use in adventure fiction. If only the child characters had been a little older and a little more proactive. As with any fairy tale there needs to be a happy ending. Abandoned in the wilderness, they come across a village made up of former space travellers and, of course, they too suffer loneliness and desertion – only in their case it has been self imposed.

And a little adventure is brought in when the children are hijacked by some of the local yokels of the Empty while on their way to see Toby's great-grandmother. Now he has come to the end of his usefulness and has been ordered to retire to a local landfill site and await his eventual demise and erosive oxidisation.Ī fair amount of philosophical navel-gazing goes on as children and robot come to see what they have in common. Orvis has had a varied career working on other moons and planets in environments inhospitable to humans and then, after the end of his official duties, he was sold off to a series of owners who allowed him the opportunity of developing his understanding. One day, while out walking, they come across Orvis, a strange robot that appears to have a mind of its own and a sense of desertion as strong as that held by the children. Toby and Thaddeus have been sent to attend a prestigious Earth school, Hillandale Academy, where both are very unhappy. The setting is an Earth that came close to environmental self destruction but, after sending most of its population out to colonise other worlds, it is recovering with the remnant of its people either sheltered inside domed towns or roughing it in the Empty. This is a story that mixes elements of a fairy tale with suitably young protagonists, they are twelve and ten, an ancient robot that is gaining human emotions, and an overall plot that seems to be aimed at a young adult audience.

Orvis by Helen Mary Hoover