A Beginner’s Guide to Ruling the Galaxy

David Solomons's A Beginner's Guide to Ruling the Galaxy is a very funny space story for 11 year olds about a boy whose annoying new neighbour turns out to be an alien princess.

What happens

Gavin likes to keep his head down. He reads on his own before the bell, and he's moved house often enough to know all about being the new kid.

Then Niki Apple turns up on the school steps and claims the whole place in the name of the Galactic League. Nobody pays any attention, except Gavin. From that day on she follows him everywhere, eats his sandwiches and orders him around.

And everyone else adores her. She wins the school quiz single-handed, gets elected head of the student council with ninety-seven per cent of the vote, and changes her title to Supreme Leader in Perpetuity.

It's a talking cat that gives the game away. Gavin gets dragged into a chase through the park, a flying saucer blows up, and he ends up in a secret bunker under Niki's dad's garden office. Then her dad turns into a lion (Gavin faints).

The truth is that Niki's parents are the two most evil rulers in the galaxy. They've split up, they're at war, and they both want her. Her Earth family is really a lion warrior bodyguard, a robot mum with scalpels in her wrist, and Bart, who was grown in a vat. They've fled to the most boring hiding place in the universe. Middling.

The jokes come thick and fast. Niki's attempts to act human are the best bit, like guessing an election means blasting an alien out of an airlock. Bart covers for her with a honking laugh every time she says something too alien. And the chapters from Niki's side, where she films herself moaning about "planet Dirt" for her six followers, are a treat.

Under all the silliness there's a friendship story brewing between two kids who both feel out of place. Will they end up actually liking each other? It's by no means certain!

The humour has a slightly dark streak (Bart cheerfully explains that his organs are spares for Niki), which most readers this age will find hilarious.

What to read next

If they fall for David Solomons's brand of comic sci-fi, My Brother Is a Superhero is about Luke, a comics fan who misses his big brother getting superpowers because he popped down from the tree house for a wee.