Too much space!

Jonathan Roth

Book - 2018

After being humiliated while on a field trip to Pluto, Bob, with the help of his alien friend Beep, tries to change his personality and overcome his fears (heights, darkness, space, and spiders) before the next field trip to a black hole. Includes facts about Pluto.

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Location Call Number   Status
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Subjects
Genres
Science fiction
Published
New York : Aladdin [2018]
Language
English
Main Author
Jonathan Roth (author)
Edition
First Aladdin edition
Item Description
Includes an excerpt from Party crashers.
Physical Description
104 pages : illustrations ; 19 cm
ISBN
9781481488525
9781481488532
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

In a series opener for younger fans of Scott Seegert's Sci-fi Junior High (2017), Bob, an otherwise ordinary Earthling, suffers diverse misadventures notably one that leaves him with his tongue stuck to frozen Pluto, and another that takes him all too close to a black hole's event horizon (or, as his teacher calls it, the bye-bye forever zone) as orbiting Astro Elementary's newest student. Meanwhile, he also falls in with Beep, a manic froglike space alien who thinks he's its mother, and through several humiliating encounters, forms a budding friendship with Laniakea Supercluster, a cool classmate with a jar of strangely intelligent spiders (one, for instance, weaving a web with the message Some Pig). Roth closes with a chapter of Extra Credit Fun Space Facts about Pluto, but along with small, comical vignettes and views of Bob looking panicky, he also slips weightless science talk and even an occasional equation into the narrative. All pretty sporky, as Bob would approvingly put it.--Peters, John Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 1-4-When Bob took the test to go to Astro Elementary, a school on a space station orbiting Saturn, he never thought, and definitely never hoped, he would have a chance of getting in. Little did he know answering "C" for every question would earn him a perfect score. Now in space, Bob is tasked with recording his adventures in a series of space blogs, or splogs, to be sent to the past so readers can learn about the super-cool future. Bob is less than thrilled to be living in space, but when he rescues a lost alien who turns up at the space station door, his school experience turns around. Beep, who treats Bob like his mother, loves to eat socks and sticks close to Bob's side. But Beep, in his confused and naive way, easily gets Bob into trouble. He convinces him to lick the surface of Pluto while they are on a field trip because it tastes like an orange ice pop, sending the two into a spiral of an adventure. And all Bob wants to do is make it through the school year, and maybe get his crush Lani to like him. Roth creates many unusual space terms and infuses the story with humor and gross details that are sure to make kids giggle. Beep is a cute and fun sidekick and Bob is -relatable as an average kid in a not-so-average situation. Illustrations in a simple style add to the silliness of the story. VERDICT A strong addition to any library's chapter book selection. Offer to kids who love funny stories but may be too young for books like -Diary of a Wimpy Kid.-Erica Deb, Matawan Aberdeen Public Library, NJ © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

Bob, a human boy, and Beep, an ET, have adventures in space.After answering a multiple-choice test solely with "C," Bob accidentally receives the highest test score on the planet and is invited to Astro Elementary, a school in spacewhich, according to Bob, is "THE MOST TERRIFYING PLACE EVER!" The spot illustrations (credited by narrator Bob to Beep) portray Bob and the other human characters as light-skinned, including Bob's female classmate Laniwhom he appears to like, though he won't admit it. (On the cover, he appears to have light brown skin, however.) When he answers a knock at the airlock door, Bob finds Beep, an extraterrestrial separated from his family, who adopts Bob as his "Bob-mother." Bob chronicles their adventures as "splogs" addressed to the Kids of the Past; the first is a field trip to Pluto. When Bob foolishly gets his tongue stuck on the dwarf planet's surface, he's saved by Lani's quick thinking, even as she laments the foolishness of "Boys." Similarly shallow and ridiculous high jinks take up the remainder of the book. While the episodic plot and minimal science could be forgiven given the early-chapter-book audience, the fact that the futureand spaceholds the same gender assumptions that plague the here and now is more than unfortunate. Here's hoping the next installment has the depth and creativity science fiction should deliver. (Science fiction. 6-9) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Too Much Space! SPLOG ENTRY #1 A Horrible Place Called Space Dear Kids of the Past, Hi. My name's Bob and I live and go to school in space. That's right, space. Pretty sporky, huh? I'm the new kid this year at Astro Elementary, the only school in orbit around one of the outer planets. There's just one micro little problem: SPACE IS THE MOST TERRIFYING PLACE EVER! If you've been to space, you know what I mean: It's dark, cold, airless--and it goes on for infinity! Okay, maybe it ends at some super huge wall. But what's behind that wall? More space? Bigger walls? Giant space spiders?! Just kidding about that last one. There are no spiders in space. Are there? No really, are there? Beep just said to say hi. Beep is a young alien who got separated from his 600 siblings when they were playing hide-and-seek in some asteroid field. Then he floated around the void for a while, until he ended up here. Sad, huh? You know what's even sadder? I was the one who found him knocking on our space station's air lock door and let him in. Now he thinks I'm his new mother! On the bright side, everyone at school says Beep is super cute and fun to have around. And since he won't leave my side, they let him join my class as the school's first alien student. He's definitely a quick learner--he picks up languages in no time, and his grades are already better than mine! Anyway, I'm writing these space logs (or splogs, as we call them) partly to tell you all about my hectic life, but mostly because it's an assignment to show you how "great" things are here in the future. At the end of each week I'll put all my entries into a time-velope and mail it to 200 years ago. If you receive this, please write back; and while you're at it, please also include a pile of vintage twenty-first-century comic books! Thanks. Beep will help with the pictures. He's super talented and loves to draw, though in his excitement he sometimes eats all his pencils. Hope you enjoy! Excerpted from Too Much Space! by Jonathan Roth All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.