Cosmic

Frank Cottrell Boyce's Cosmic is a very funny space adventure for 9 year olds about a boy who's so tall that everyone thinks he's a grown-up.

What happens

Liam Digby is twelve. He's also very, very tall, and he's started growing a beard. So people keep mistaking him for an adult. On his first day at secondary school, the head teacher takes him for the new head of media studies and walks him onto the stage in assembly (he goes along with it, of course).

The book opens with Liam talking into his phone, recording a message for his mum and dad. They think he's on a school trip to the Lake District. He's actually on a rocket, about two hundred thousand miles above the Earth, and very lost. How on earth did that happen? The rest of the book is him explaining.

And the explaining is the best bit. Liam can't resist a chance to "level up", like in the computer games he loves. He rides a fairground thrill ride eight times in one afternoon while his dad is out searching for him. He ends up behind the wheel of a Porsche in a car showroom, with his friend Florida Kirby pretending to be his daughter.

You'll probably laugh out loud a lot. Liam is so matter-of-fact about the most ridiculous situations. And Florida, who's obsessed with celebrities and being sick, steals every scene she's in.

There's something quite lovely underneath the jokes too. Liam keeps coming back to his dad, a Liverpool taxi driver who always somehow finds him. Up in space he wonders whether he's still a kid at all. It's a story about growing up that's also about wanting to stay little for a bit longer.

A couple of small things. This edition is American, so it's Mom and cotton candy, even though the story is set in Bootle, near Liverpool. There's the odd "hell" from a cross dad. And Liam tells a LOT of fibs to grown-ups, which you might want to chat about (it doesn't exactly go smoothly for him).

If your reader enjoys a clever, slightly clueless boy talking straight to them, this is brilliant.

What to read next

For another boy whose family ends up in something much bigger than they meant to, try Frank Cottrell Boyce's Framed. Dylan's dad runs the garage in a tiny town in Snowdonia, and Dylan admits right at the start that they got into the art-theft business.