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Summary
Summary
Liam has always felt a bit like he's stuck between two worlds. This isprimarily because he's a twelve-year-old kid who looks like he's about thirty. Sometimes it's not so bad, like when his new principal mistakes him for a teacher on the first day of school or when he convinces a car dealer to let him take a Porsche out on a test drive. But mostly it's just frustrating, being a kid trapped in an adult world. And so he decides to flip things around. Liam cons his way onto the first spaceship to take civilians into space, a special flight for a group of kids and an adult chaperone, and he is going as the adult chaperone. It's not long before Liam, along with his friends, is stuck between two worlds again--only this time he's 239,000 miles from home.
Frank Cottrell Boyce, author of Millions and Framed, brings us a funny and touching story of the many ways in which grown-upness is truly wasted on grown-ups.
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-Although Liam Digby is a typical kid who loves World of Warcraft video games and theme-park rides, his physical appearance is closer to age 30 than 12. Looking like an adult is challenging, but it can be useful. He learns about an experimental project to create the ultimate thrill ride-sending a select group of kids into space. He figures that he has no chance to be one of the chosen youngsters, so he decides to apply as the in-flight father chaperone. After recruiting his friend Florida to pose as his daughter, Liam has to compete with three other candidates to get the job. Although he has brushed up on his "dad skills," it isn't always easy to stay in character. The men are pompous, boring-and not above cheating to get ahead. Meanwhile, Florida has very firm notions of how her "dad" ought to behave and she isn't sure that Liam measures up. Eventually, the project director selects Liam for the space flight, precisely because of his "childlike quality," and the project kids start to look to him as a father figure-even Florida. Then, when an accident sends the rocket out of control, Liam has to assume the adult responsibility of getting them all back safely. Beneath the entertaining science-fiction adventure is a strong theme of individual maturity. While the real grown-ups are self-centered and childish, Liam takes charge with surprisingly mature courage. Readers will appreciate the sharp, realistic, and very funny dialogue as well as Liam's technique of solving real-world problems using his role-playing-game expertise.-Elaine E. Knight, Lincoln Elementary Schools, IL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
The hero of Boyce's enchanting third novel has grown a bit over the summer. "Seven inches is not a spurt," his father says. "Seven inches is a mutation." Having facial hair and the height of an adult is a nuisance for 12-year-old Liam, until he realizes he can pass for a grownup. The charade escalates into danger when Liam passes himself off as his own father and wins a trip to a new theme park in China with his friend Florida, where they will be the first to experience an out-of-this-world new thrill ride. "The Rocket" turns out to be a real rocket, and the novel opens with Liam and four other kids literally lost in space. What follows is a hilarious and heartfelt examination of "dadliness" in all its forms, including idiotic competitiveness and sports chatter, but also genuine care and concern. Luckily for the errant space cadets, Liam possesses skills honed playing World of Warcraft online-yes, here is a novel, finally, that confirms that playing computer games can be good for you. A can't-miss offering from an author whose latest novel may be his best yet. Ages 8-12. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
The popular author of Millions and Framed (rev. 11/06) returns for yet another zany adventure. Twelve-year-old Liam, tall for his age, is often mistaken for an adult, a fact that he uses to his advantage when he finds that he's won a vacation package to what he thinks is an amusement park. He brings his friend, Florida, as his "daughter." Once Liam and Florida, along with the other prize-winning children and their fathers, get off the plane, they find themselves in China, and the amusement park turns out to be a training ground for a rocket launch. The children -- and one dad -- are to go aboard the first manned spacecraft to leave Earth's orbit since Apollo 17. Liam ultimately wins the right to be the accompanying parent, but things go wrong in space, and only some quick thinking by the kids averts a disaster. The book opens with Liam in space (leaving an extended message for his parents on a cell phone) and then flashes back to the beginning of the story. The flashback immediately grabs the reader's attention, and the likable characters, the gentle sense of humor, and the far-fetched adventure will keep it. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Twelve-year-old Liam Digby is Completely Doomed. He's lost in outer space, incommunicado, in a Chinese spacecraft called Infinite Possibility. To further complicate matters, he's an imposter: a tall-for-his-age kid with premature facial hair pretending to be a dad so he could participate in the secret civilian space flight in the first placea Charlie and the Chocolate Factorystyle contest in which the winning children get to go on the ultimate thrill ride, an actual rocket. The good news is, the view is amazing: "When you're in it, space looks like the biggest firework display everexcept it's on pause. Even if you're Completely Doomed, you've got to be impressed." On the heels of the Carnegie Medalwinning Millions (2004) and Framed (2006), Cottrell Boyce has created a riveting, affecting, sometimes snortingly funny "what-if" scenario that illuminates the realities of space travel as it thoughtfully examines the nature of adulthood. Liam's musings on what it takes to be a good, responsible father are dryly comical but also charmingly earnest. A high-levity zero-gravity romp. (Science fiction. 10-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Liam is a big lad. So big that strangers mistake the 12-year-old for an adult. Even his teachers seem to conflate tall with old. So heaven forbid he should ever make a mistake. Then it's all, You should know better, big lad like you. Life sure is hard for poor, burdened Liam (did I mention the Premature Facial Hair?) until, that is, he decides to enter the Greatest Dad Ever Contest and in short order finds himself on a rocket ship that is off course and 200,000 miles above the earth. Yes, quite a few things some of them cosmic and all of them extremely funny do happen in between. Boyce is a Carnegie Medal-winning author, after all (for Millions, 2004), and he knows how to tell a compellingly good story. But in his latest extravagantly imaginative and marvelously good-natured novel he has also written one that is bound to win readers' hearts, if not a clutch of big prizes though Cosmic was shortlisted for both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize when it was published in England. There are lots of surprises in Liam's story, and without spoiling any of them by saying more, just know that this is not only a story about big lads, but also about dads and dadliness!--Cart, Michael Copyright 2009 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Boyce, the author of "Millions," tells good stories about fathers and sons. With echoes of Roald Dahl, four specially chosen fathers and children (well, with one ringer - a very tall 12-year-old) face a set of challenges posed by a slightly mad billionaire that will send them around the moon, if they don't drift into space first. The novel ends with an elegant punch line, and a touching endorsement of filial love. "Maybe everyone's got their own special gravity that lets you go far away, really far away sometimes, but which always brings you back in the end." THE LONGEST NIGHT By Marion Dane Bauer. Illustrated by Ted Lewin. Holiday House. $17.95. (Ages 4 to 8) "The snow lies deep. The night is long and long." Aided by Lewin's shadowy watercolors of a forest at night, Bauer beautifully conjures the deepest part of winter, when bears and mice sleep but other creatures think they know how to bring the darkness to an end, like a moose who says, "I have antlers strong enough to scoop up the sun and bring it home" (the wind sighs, "Not you"). In the end, the chickadee's song does the trick, and light floods in. NASREEN'S SECRET SCHOOL A True Story From Afghanistan. Written and illustrated by Jeanette Winter. Beach Lane/Simon & Schuster. $16.99. (Ages 6 to 9) Winter's precise acrylics tell this story in matter-of-fact images: Taliban soldiers coming down the mountain to the city of Herat, "where art and music and learning once flourished"; a girl called Nasreen sitting at home, silent since her parents disappeared, forbidden to attend school; the grandmother, who tells the story, taking her to a secret girls' school in a private home. The students' brightly colored headscarves stand in for their bravery and eagerness to learn. HERE COMES JACK FROST Written and illustrated by Kazuno Kohara. Roaring Brook. $12.99. (Ages 3 to 6) Kohara follows up her beguiling Halloween tale, "Ghosts in the House!" with another seasonal fable. "Once there was a boy who lived in a house in the woods. It was winter, and all his friends were hibernating. 'I hate winter,' he sighed." Then Jack Frost, a spiky elf full of good cheer, shows up to remind him that winter has a magic all its own. Kohara's linocut illustrations begin in faded blue, but deep azure and white take over as everything is covered in snow and ice; finally an early sign of spring brings the fun to an end, until next year. WAR GAMES By Audrey Couloumbis and Akila Couloumbis. Random House. $16.99. (Ages 8 to 12) In this richly detailed novel, a Greek family tries to stay on the sidelines as the German Army closes in. The year is 1941, and two brothers shoot marbles and play catch as a cover for dangerous games, like passing defiant messages (inspired by a 19-year-old cousin, a resistance fighter). Based on research and family memories of the period, the novel shows how the greatest risk for the villagers, besides enemy soldiers, may be the suspicion that comes between neighbors. WHEN STELLA WAS VERY, VERY SMALL Written and illustrated by Marie-Louise Gay. Groundwood/House of Anansi. $16.95. (Ages 2 to 5) In a kind of prequel to Gay's much loved Stella series, a toddler Stella - we immediately recognize the unruly red hair - has some early adventures. "Stella couldn't open doors, look through keyholes or even tie her shoes," but she can already train her sky-high imagination on her surroundings. The repeated words "when Stella was very, very small" accompany images of everyday objects and family pets pressed into service as sidekicks, charmingly animating her world. JULIE JUST