This story takes place in Margie’s house on May 17, 2155. Margie and Tommy, the two main characters, live in a time where all books are replaced by “telebooks”. The story starts with Tommy finding an actual book.
Technology vs. Society
Margie is an eleven-year-old girl who is curious about the past and how schools used to be.She hates school, and especially hates her mechanical teacher.
Tommy is Margie’solder brother. He is thirteen years old and is very intelligent. He is a bookworm, and has a collection of books in his device called “tele books.”
The conflict isthe gap between the technological world in the future, and the social world welive in now. In Margie’s world, technology completely took over the society.Margie explains that human teachers are replaced by mechanical teachers, and environmentssuch as schools do not exist. Instead, the classroom takes place in theirhouse, where all the lessons are taught on a big computer screen.
The rising actionis when Margie explains how she is doing worse and worse in school, aftertaking tests her mechanical teacher shows on its screen. She describes how thiscomputer/Teacher keeps breaking down, and how she wishes for her parents totake it away forever. This is when Margie’s curiousness about the schools inthe past start to grow.