Space Oddity

Christopher Edge's Space Oddity is a funny, big-hearted story for 9 year olds about a boy whose dad might be the most embarrassing man in the universe.

What happens

Jake is ten and has finally found something he's brilliant at. Gymnastics. At the school's space-themed concert he's Luke Skywalker, flipping and tumbling across the stage while the audience goes "Ooooh".

Then Darth Vader somersaults on for the big fight. Except it isn't his friend Damon. It's somebody much taller, with a black bin on his head and a face drawn on the front in silver pen. "Jake, I am your father."

It really is his dad. The whole hall starts chanting "Jake's dad!" while Jake ends up on his bottom on the mat.

He's got a long list of reasons to be cross. The day Dad turned bright green in the playground (a reaction to a wheatgrass shake, apparently). The sack race where he bounced the whole length of the track. The giant Lego spaceship that wrecked the summer fete. Dad can't sing, can't keep a job and wants to be a rock star called Ion Cosmos.

So when Mum sends the two of them off camping in Middlewich Forest, Jake is not impressed. Especially when the pop-up tent blows away into the trees and lands on something metal.

Here's the fun part. The book opens with a green-skinned alien called Ion crash-landing in that very forest. Jake's dad is called Ion. He has one blue eye and one green one, and Mum once says he's got good hearts before correcting herself. Your reader will probably put two and two together long before Jake does, and that's half the enjoyment!

Underneath all the jokes, it's really about a boy and his dad finding their way back to each other. Jake remembers lightsaber duels in the back garden and staring at the stars together, which is exactly why his anger feels so real.

What to read next

For another Christopher Edge story that mixes big science with family feelings, try The Many Worlds of Albie Bright. It opens just after Albie's mum has died, and he decides to use quantum physics to go and find her.