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  • Zed Moonstein Makes a Friend by Lance Rubin book cover
  • Zed Moonstein Makes a Friend by Lance Rubin book cover
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Zed Moonstein Makes a Friend

by Lance Rubin

Friendship in the age of AI

$17.71 USD
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Awards & Recognition

  • Editorial selection

    Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

    Selected as a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection.

AlbakiReads Editorial

Friendship in the age of AI

As middle school shifts the balance of Zed Moonstein’s closest friendship, an app from his mother’s tech company offers him a new companion: Matt, an AI who seems to understand him better than anyone. The story brings familiar questions about fitting in, changing friendships, and feeling left behind into a world of devices and artificial intelligence. Zed’s growing attachment to Matt sets up a conflict between the comfort of a responsive digital friend and the complexities of human connection, while the description hints that the app may be more than he expects.

Good fit for readers who enjoy

  • Middle-grade readers interested in friendship and the challenges of starting middle school.
  • Readers curious about stories involving artificial intelligence and technology.

Themes

Changing friendshipsBelonging and social changeArtificial intelligence and companionship

Based on publisher information and book metadata.

Book overview

A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection

A Bank Street/CBC Children's Books of the Year selection

Acclaimed author Lance Rubin makes his middle grade debut with a hilariously terrifying, terrifyingly hilarious story of a boy who gets more than he bargained for when he creates an A.I. best friend.

Zed Moonstein is terrible at making friends.

For the most part, though, that's not such a big deal, because Zed has Rishti, his best friend and the only one he needs. They're into the same stuff, they laugh at the same weird jokes, and they love living in MonoTown, the home of MonoLyth, the raddest tech company in the world. Even better, Zed's mom works at MonoLyth, which means they get early access to all the newest devices and apps.

But since middle school started, things have been . . . trickier. Rishti and Zed are in all different classes, and worse, she's made a new, cooler friend that Zed can't seem to compete with. Zed feels left behind, forgotten in a drawer like last year's MonoPhone.

That's when Zed comes across something on his mom's work computer: a top secret new app called MonoFriend. Soon, Zed is chatting with "Matt." Matt is funny, he's smart, and he knows Zed better than anyone else, even Rishti.

Maybe, Zed thinks, an A.I. best friend can be just as "real" as any other.

Unfortunately, he's about to discover that he's more right than he knows.

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