Spaceheadz 2

Jon Scieszka's Spaceheadz 2 is a wildly silly alien comedy for 9 year olds about a boy trying to save the world with two classmates who talk like adverts.

What happens

Michael K. is in fifth grade in Brooklyn. His friends Bob and Jennifer are aliens from planet SPHDZ, and their leader is a hamster called Major Fluffy. They need to sign up over three million kids as Spaceheadz. If they don't, Earth gets turned off.

So far, their website has a few thousand.

This one opens with Bob and Jennifer attacking the playground in alien costumes. (It's Halloween, they explain. Halloween is next month.) Then a bully flicks blue yoghurt onto Jennifer's shoe, and the monkey bars end up crushed into a giant metal doughnut.

Which is how Venus and TJ find out. Venus is a scientist who wants proof of everything. TJ knows all there is to know about insects. Now they're in on the mission too.

Meanwhile Agent Umber of the Anti-Alien Agency is back on the case. When the call comes he's standing on a pavement in a giant chicken suit. He comes into school dressed as a monkey. It doesn't go well.

Reading it is a bit like flicking through TV channels. There are short chapters, lists and quick cuts to a flock of geese, to Michael K.'s mum and dad at their mysterious new jobs and to Baby K. at nursery. Bob and Jennifer shout slogans like Nonstick! and Sugar-free! at the oddest moments. You'll probably find yourself reading those bits aloud.

Then there's the kindergarten play. Michael K. picks the easiest-sounding school project and ends up as the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. Jennifer is Granny, and she threatens him with a wrestling move.

Does it all make sense? Not really, and that's half the fun. Under the chaos there's a lovely thread about friendship, and about Michael K. slowly working out why his alien friends behave the way they do.

It's set in America, so expect words like fifth grade and kindergarten.

What to read next

If they haven't met Bob and Jennifer yet, start with the first Spaceheadz book, on Michael K.'s very first morning at a new school, when the girl beside him eats his pencil.