A Very Personal Computer

What if one day you were sitting in front of a computer and the impossible happened: it started communicating with you and actually offered to do your homework for you? Just when twelve year-old Pollard Gunning is giving up on almost everything—eighth grade, the Red Sox, his lousy home life—that's just what happens. And that's only the beginning. Next Pollard is learning how to be a dream batter—and how to ask a girl out on a date. Suddenly, Pollard's mixed-up world takes a techno-turn and the "year of weird" also becomes the year a very personal computer comes to the rescue. Justine Rendal has written a fresh, funny, and moving novel about loss and love and unlikely friendships that shows how sometimes even the impossible can be wonderfully possible.

1996 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library)