Galaxy Zack – Hello, Nebulon!

Galaxy Zack - Hello, Nebulon! by Ray O'Ryan is a friendship story for 5 year olds about moving house, except the new house happens to be on another planet.

What happens

Zack Nelson is eight and it's moving day. He watches Earth shrink to a little blue dot out of the window of the family space cruiser and he does not want to go.

Everybody else is fine about it. Dad has a brilliant new job. Mum is starting her own business. The eleven year old twins, Charlotte and Cathy, have each other and finish each other's sentences.

Zack is the one who has to make new friends. His best mate Bert is staying behind on Earth. So is Zack's dog.

That worry turns into a proper nightmare on the way, and it's a good one. His classmates have tentacles. The teacher is a two-headed snake. The pizza arrives covered in worms. Then Mum wakes him up and they're nearly there.

What Nebulon is actually like is brilliant, and this is where a young reader will be grinning. Cars come in little boxes off a shelf and unfold when you press a button. They fly. The house has an elevator that goes sideways through tubes.

Best of all is Ira, the computer who runs the whole house. Zack tells him not to call him Master Zack. So Ira calls him Master Just Zack for the rest of the book. It gets funnier every time.

Ira also makes dinner appear through the ceiling, remembers the exact temperature your reader would want their shower, and knows every song ever recorded on twenty-three planets.

Then Mum mentions school starts tomorrow, and Zack stops chewing his pizza.

Underneath the gadgets it's a very simple, very kind story about being the new one. Zack keeps deciding this place might be all right, then finding something else to be nervous about. That's exactly how it goes.

One small thing worth knowing. The nightmare bit has slimy monsters and mouldy, wriggling food, so if your reader is easily spooked at bedtime, you might want to be nearby for that page. It lasts about two minutes and he wakes up safe.

If you've got a child starting somewhere new, or leaving friends behind, this is a gentle way in. If they just want flying cars and a house that talks back, that works too!

What to read next

There's more of Zack in Galaxy Zack - Journey to Juno, which is also in the library. He's still the new boy, but by then he has Drake to sit with, and his class is off to explore a planet made of crystals.