Galaxy Zack – The Prehistoric Planet

Ray O'Ryan's The Prehistoric Planet is a Galaxy Zack space adventure for 5 year olds about taking a lost baby dinosaur home.

What happens

It's the third Galaxy Zack book. Zack Nelson and his family moved from Earth to the planet Nebulon a few months ago, and life there is full of flying cars, robot helpers and hyperphones.

Now a baby pterosaur has turned up on Nebulon, and nobody knows where it came from. Zack knows LOTS about pterosaurs (he can even tell you how to say it). So he can't stop thinking about it, even in his dreams, which are full of jungles and very big T. rexes.

His dad works at Nebulonics, where they're building a shiny new ultra-shuttle to fly the pterosaur back to its home planet. Zack gets to visit on Bring Your Child to Work Day. And then comes the best news of all. Can Zack come on the trip?

The planet is everything he dreamed about. There's a giant waterfall, a family of long-necked brachiosaurs having a drink and two T. rexes having a wrestle. There's a scary moment at the edge of a cliff too, but it's over quickly and his dad and his dog are right there.

Oh, and his dog Luna stows away on the shuttle. Of course she does!

This is a lovely one for early independent readers. The chapters are short and full of sound effects (KA-CAAAAW!). The dino facts are slipped in without any fuss. And there's lots of little fun, like Zack's twin sisters who finish each other's sentences and the Nebulon word for cool, which is "grape".

If you've got a young dinosaur fan who also loves rockets, this is pretty much a dream combination. It's warm and gentle and the scariest thing in it is a roar.

What to read next

The series starts with Hello, Nebulon, the book where the Nelsons pack up and fly away from Earth and Zack has to start all over again on a new planet. It's a sweet place to go next if they want to see how it all began.