Children's book. Family with a child main character has substantial home automation. A pet, maybe hamster/ gerbil/ mouse, disappears. The home automation starts to malfunction, progressively worsening. Recalled from mid-late 1980s. Spoiler

[Attention]

It was probably for ages 5-10 and not much higher. Light and simple and campy, similar in that way to Gardiner's _Top Secret_ (human photosynthesis science experiment), and from the same era.

(view spoiler)[The denouement involves the discovery that the pet is in the walls building a nest in the automation computer, causing it to malfunction. (hide spoiler)]

[Rainbowheart]

My first thought was Lazy Tommy Pumpkinhead, but it sounds like your book was more of a novel?

[Attention]

I can't be sure of the exact reading level. It wasn't up to the level of the Narnia series, the Westing Game, or even Harry Potter. I'd be very surprised if it were a picturebook, though; it might've had some illustrations, but I think it was at least a novella.

The recollection I have of it is that the plot centered on solving the dual mysteries of what happened to the pet and what was causing the automation to gradually go haywire. Not so much on self-reflection like Lazy Tommy seems to be about, and no storm causing the automation to fail like Lazy Tommy seems to have. The resolution was solving both mysteries and realizing they were connected.

It might be an obscure, mediocre book from the scholastic book club catalog at the time.

[Rainbowheart]

The Pets' Revolt?

I don't see anything about home automation, though.

[Rainbowheart]

Danny Dunn and the Automatic House?

[Attention]

Neither of those looks right. It wasn't an animal-perspective story; the pet was missing for most of the plot, while the home automation increasingly acted up. Nobody was trapped inside the home, either either; the characters were simply concerned about the missing pet and increasingly misbehaving home automation. I think it was a relatively normal family, though with cutting-edge-for-the-time home automation.

It's probably such a minor book and author that it'll be next to impossible to find unless someone else happens to have a vivid memory of it and stumbles across this query. I'll check back on this thread occasionally, but won't reply again unless someone gets it or I remember something different. I'm fairly certain of all the details I've explained so far; if they don't fit, it's probably not the book.

[Rainbowheart]

I'm sure we can track this down!

Can you describe the home automation a bit more? I was thinking along the lines of science fiction, but your description makes it sound more realistic for a 1980s setting, like automatic lights and blinds and things like that?

[Alan]

Smart House by Kate Wilhelm is about an automated house and was written in the right era (1989), but the other details don't fit. I tried plugging it into LibraryThing, but the recommendations weren't great.