I absolutely loved this book from the very beginning until the end! In a way I was a little creeped out by some of the not-so-far-off situations in the story compared to what we are going through today during a pandemic, but was also very intriguing.
Cleo, the protagonist, is such a compassionate and caring individual, while also whip smart - she’s a great character for any reader to want to aspire to be more like!
Is it too much to ask for a book two, please!!

In 2096, Cleo never leaves home because of influenza D that hit in 2027. Deliveries are made by drones through ports in homes. When Cleo gets a delivery for someone unknown, it leads her on a journey from everything she called home. Readers will not be able to put this futuristic adventure down!

Excellent excellent book! I love all of Jake Burt's books and this one is just as great as his previous books. His stories are enjoyed by both children and adults. Read this in the middle of a pandemic and sorta freaked me a bit knowing he wrote this way before Covid. Great story - strong characters. Can't wait to have available in my store!

Reading this book while living through pandemic times was a bit surreal. Cleo and her family live isolated in their home after Influenza D destroyed their world. When a mysterious package arrives at her house for another person, Cleo's morality pushes her out the comfort and isolation of her home. Cleo's many adventures were a fun escape from our current day pandemic.

Written two years before the current pandemic (which Burt discusses in the afterword), Cleo Porter and the Body Electric takes place in a future world decimated by an influenza pandemic. People live in sealed apartments and receive daily supplies through drone deliveries. Their only contact with other people comes via virtual reality. Readers may come away with a lot of questions about this world. Who, if anyone, is in charge? How would a crime committed in an apartment be handled? Are there police, and if so, how would they get into an apartment? What do people besides surgeons do for a living? But Burt's purpose is less to describe a dystopian world (and the world isn't all bad -who wouldn't want an AI tutor like Ms. VAIN?) than to show the astonishing courage and compassion of Cleo, who risks everything to bring a vial of medicine to a woman when it is (she believes) mistakenly delivered to her apartment. The story itself is riveting, as Cleo's quest turns death-defying at several moments.

If you need a book that you won’t be able to resist to put down… This one is for you! I was enthralled by this prescient middle grade book as soon as I read the first page. Let alone, the cover is captivating itself.

Even though this is set many decades ahead of present time, you can see how realistic the living situation could be if indeed a virus wiped out a majority of the population. I liked that Cleo’s apartment wasn’t completely “tech-ified” but incorporated many elements that would deem futuristic, like distance learning with Mrs. VAIN, her robotic and all-knowing teacher. Mrs. VAIN is the perfect teacher because of how kind, compassionate, and reassuring she is for Cleo. Cleo has many mental breakdowns and Mrs. VAIN was typically there to help her strategize and calm down. Another futuristic aspect I thought was neat was the simulator. Cleo’s dad tries to make a dry grass for a fall-based soccer field and Cleo gets to test it out in the simulator. In this simulator, she can travel anywhere she wants and even meets up with “friends” aka other quarantined kids.

What really kept me on the edge is the mayhem that occurs when Cleo escapes her apartment (I won’t share too much). There are drones that fly everywhere to deliver groceries, home goods, medicine, and more, but the elements that Cleo faces made me so nervous for her. It was wonderful to learn more about her as a person when she was trying to complete this dangerous journey, and how the end of the book just riled me up. I wasn’t expecting to cry, but I sure did. This book needed to be published like yesterday, BUT October 6th will have to do!

Was excited to read this after I head the author talk about it. He wrote this before the Covid-19 pandemic but readers can see how it is eerily possible. The emotions that Cleo goes through felt very real for a sheltered child and her bravery and tenacity were quite believable. I did not see the ending coming!

Eerily relevant story in light of our current pandemic! Fast-paced and compelling, with an excellent mix of science, action and humor. This is a science fiction story that a lot of kids will connect with.

Big fan of Jake Burt and so excited to see his new book on here. Cleo Porter and her family are isolated at home. Food is delivered by drones and they are stuck inside a house without doors or windows. A far too familiar story for those of us alive during this pandemic, Burt's book begs the question - what does it mean to be alive? Is living alone, isolated from everything a life worth living? The book takes a turn when Cleo and her family receive a package meant for someone else. Should they risk their lives to deliver it?

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC of this book.

I love everything this author writes, and even though this is extremely different from his realistic fiction, I think it's a fantastic story. Although publishing during a pandemic is far from ideal, I think more readers will find this book because of its timely subject, which I hope will lead them to find his other underrated books.

There is so much character growth in this story as Cleo transforms from a girl confined to her home to avoid possible contamination with a deadly strain of influenza, to a thoughtful, brave and giving individual. Her anxiety, which is present from the outset, is not something to overcome but to face and work through as she focuses on things that matter to her. Her compassion and desire to help others were admirable qualities that would make her a wonderful doctor. I also really enjoyed her relationship with Angie, whose mentorship helped Cleo learn so much about herself.

I highly recommend this book, and think it would lead to some fascinating and very timely discussions with students regarding fear, isolation, history, and learning how to cope in the aftermath of a deadly illness.

Cleo Porter and the Body Electric is a fantastic book! I am always on the lookout for great science fiction books to add to my library collection that will immediately hook the students and this does not disappoint. Cleo Porter lives in isolation in an apartment with her parents. She has never left her apartment because of a deadly virus. Everything the family needs is transported via drone to their door and delivered through a tube. Then one day she gets the wrong package by mistake of critical medicine and this sets her on a journey to bring it to it's proper owner. I will definitely be buying this one for my library when it is out. Kind of surreal to be reading it during the Covid 19 pandemic.

Talk about suspenseful and unputdownable! This book kept me up reading long after I wanted to go to sleep, and was the first thing I picked up in the morning. In a world full of fears eerily similar to ours at the moment, as a result of a deadly Influenza D, everyone lives inside their own home and everything they need gets directly delivered to them by a system of drones. When Cleo Porter accidentally gets someone else’s lifesaving medicine delivered to her, she can’t help but snap into action and she dares to leave her apartment to get this medicine to its intended recipient with the goal of saving a life. The challenges she faces will keep the reader worried for her, wondering what’s going to happen, and pondering the very idea of what it would be like to live in a world such as theirs. An engaging and thought-provoking read!

I loved this book and think my middle school kids will as well. I read it very quickly and loved the ending! I’m kind of hoping there is a sequel!

It's 2096, Cleo Porter and her parents never leave their apartment. It has no doors, no windows, and only a port where deliveries come into the apartment. This is because of a horrible flu that devastated the world in 2027, Influenza D. It mutated with each new case, so a cure couldn't be found. The world locked down, and huge monolithic apartment complexes took over. Cleo attends online school with a virtual teacher, Mrs. VAIN (Virtual Adaptive Instructional Network) and is working on a strenuous program to become a doctor like her mother. Her mother, a surgeon, performs surgery by manipulating drones, and her father constructs code for virtual environments. One day, when Cleo is deep in her studies, there is a package delivered to the apartment. It's got the right address, but the name is wrong; there's no Miriam Wendemore-Adisa. Since the delivery drones never make mistakes, Cleo doesn't have much luck contacting customer support or finding out much about the intended recipient, and she worries that the medicine that she discerns in the package is desperately needed. Her parents and her best friend are no help, so when she finally locates the woman's address, she makes a shocking choice: she will leave the apartment and deliver the medicine herself. Managing to get out of the delivery chute with a pillowcase full of supplies, she finds herself in the labyrinthine hallways of her building, battling observation and cleaning drones. She manages to make her way outside, but the world is quite a shocking place if you've never been there before. Luckily, she meets a 102 year old woman, Angie, who refused to be locked inside and scrapes together an existence with the help of Paige, a child she found outside a building where the systems had shut down. Paige gets food from the nearby fields and manages to avoid the drones that harvest it. Cleo is fascinated by the fact that the world is so huge, that Paige has scratches and sunburn from being outside, and by the fact that Angie would rather live outside than be inside getting help for her age related ailments. She is also determined to get back in order to deliver the package. Angie and Paige help her get back to the building, but it is a struggle to actually get back inside. Even if she does, will she be able to find the woman in time, and be able to return to her parents?
Strengths: Given our current situation (this is 6/23/20; Burt addresses the pandemic in an end note), this creeped me out big time. The parents even talk about how they met virtually, then got permission to get married and were delivered to their new apartment in a pod. Ahhhhhhgh! I'm with Angie on this one; I need a lot of outside time. Mrs. VAIN was a fantastic teacher, with her massive databases and elderly librarian persona (she wears a lavender cardigan), and the beginning of the book talks a lot about Cleo's medical education. This ties in nicely with the end of the book, which I don't want to spoil. There was a nice bit with her and her best friend hanging out at a virtual park, plenty of adventure both in and out of the building, and a lot of interesting philosophical ramifications to how a pandemic should be treated. Interesting, interesting book, and perfect timing!
Weaknesses: There were a couple of times where this dragged; descriptions of getting out of and back into the building. I had a LOT Of questions in my mind about how Cleo's world worked, so I would have added a few things and tightened up some of these slow bits. Of course, the lack of details gives this a lot of scope for the imagination for young readers.
What I really think: This would be great paired with Perry's Scavengers, about people living outside of a protective bubble around a city, and reminded me of a book I read years ago but can't locate-- there was a plague of some kind and children were no longer allowed out to go to school, and there were high stakes on line testing. That's going to bug me, but I'll definitely buy Cleo Porter and am amazed by Burt's versatility!

In the future, Influenza D will cause society to be housed in giant apartment like buildings, but without any human contact. Everything is done through simulation and drones. When Chloe gets a package of medicine that's not for anyone in her home, she finds a way to escape her apartment and her building. The outside world is overwhelming and unbelievable. There is so much to be afraid of. Can Chloe survive outside as well as get the medicine to where it needs to be?

This now feels like a not so distant future! I read and reviewed this for the Maine Student Book Award Committee, and I think middle grade readers will love it!

This sci-fi middle grade novel will have you sitting on the edge of your seat the entire time. Cleo Porter is studying to become a surgeon in futuristic quarantine times. Medicine for a dying woman is mysteriously delivered by a drone to her apartment. Cleo is so compassionate that she goes on a dangerous quest to try to deliver the medicine to the unknown woman. This is a must read for middle grade students who have recently been quarantined during the Coronavius of 2020. Jake Burt really knows how to connect to readers. Will there be a sequel in the future?