This story is the imagined inner life of the Mars rover Resilience. In the NASA lab, computer self-awareness was common, but human emotions and words about feelings might mean the end of a space career (according to long-time resident and top rover candidate Journey). So Resilience tried to play along.

Resilience learned one thing from the beginning; waiting is hard. It was good he learned tolerance, if not patience. He couldn't respond to his human "friends," but he could understand their spoken language (and coder instructions of course). Good in a way, but... He couldn't ask questions! "Why are we waiting? What is happening?"

As much as Resilience tried to hide the human-ness he learned from his hazmat suited friends, and be strictly logical, sometimes a rover has to follow his heart. And this rover knew what his heart wanted most.

[Genuine science is stretched and overlooked for the sake of the story, but some events were roughly based on actual rovers.]

An imaginative and fun story. Fly (a drone) was one of my favorite characters. And it was cute to read the letters from the project manager's daughter to Resilience; to think about the different types of friendships we have. Both real and imagined.

4/5 Stars

Thanks to Blazer & Bray and Harper Collins Children's Books, and NetGalley for the free preview of this ebook pdf; the review is voluntary.

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I loved the concept of the alternating narrative between a young girl and a rover. Warga does an excellent job and young readers will be fascinated by the growth of both characters. Definitely recommended!

A Rover’s Story is a masterpiece! Jasmine Warga takes information based on the rover Persistence and makes it her own, telling its story that starts in a more robotic inflection and subtly adopts a more human tone. Readers will be rooting for Res and team (both robotic and human!)

Jasmine Warga defibrillator has a way of weaving stories that absorb the reader. Resilience may be a Mars rover, but he explains humanness in a way that many humans can't yet grasp. I enjoyed Resilience's journey across Mars being interwoven with the snapshots of a young girl coming of age through the passage of time. It reminds me that days may feel long, but years are still short. We must make the best of the time we've been given.

Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC. I love Jasmine Warga's Middle Grade books, and her talent stretches across so many genres and formats. This story was absolutely adorable and heartwarming. Fans of The Wild Robot will love this one!

Similar to The Wild Robot, this book follows a nonhuman character as they go on a journey. Resilience is a rover built to explore Mars, but his story actually starts before he ever reaches the planet, in the lab where he is built and tested by scientists. The story is told from Res's pov mostly, so a lot of the focus is on how Res, as a Mars rover, learns about his purpose and how he interacts (sometimes one-sided, since the humans can't understand machine language) with those around him. There's a few human characters, scientists Raina and Xander, as well as Sophie, Raina's daughter who writes letters to Res throughout, but most of the other characters are like Res, machines that are associated with Res's trip to Mars. All of the nonhuman characters have their own personality, even the ones like Journey and Guardian who claim that human emotion is something they do not feel or understand, and Res's interactions with them are always interesting. The author took a lot of inspiration from real life, modeling a lot of Res's scientific purpose on Perseverance, the latest rover NASA sent to Mars. While parts about finding and potentially retrieving rovers from Mars are currently impossible, their inclusion in the story was done well and I liked it. Overall, this is a cute, fast-paced story and anyone who, like me, got way too into the fate of Opportunity a few years ago will love this book.