Stargazing for Beginners

Jenny McLachlan's Stargazing for Beginners is a funny, warm story for 11 year olds about a girl who knows everything about space and nothing about babies.

What happens

Meg likes things just so. Her duvet is smoothed, her globe is turned so England faces the sun and yesterday is crossed off her homework timetable in red pen.

Her mum is the opposite. She blows up a paddling pool in their tiny flat at eight in the morning (just because). Then she asks Meg to mind little sister Elsa for an afternoon.

That afternoon ends with a phone call from a plane. Mum has flown off to volunteer abroad, and she asks Meg to tell nobody except Grandad. Meg decides she'll look after Elsa on her own. How hard can one toddler be?

Very hard, it turns out! Elsa can say three words and "da" covers nearly everything. There are beans on the fridge, a phone dropped in the bath and a nappy disaster that no baby wipe could ever fix.

And it's all landed at the worst possible time. Meg wants to win a speaking competition, and the prize is a trip to mission control in Houston. The trouble is she freezes the moment anyone listens to her. She could talk about neutrinos for hours, but she can't even practise her speech in an empty flat.

Being inside Meg's head is the joy of it. She's clever and a bit prickly, and she's honest about how lonely school has been since her best friend moved to New Zealand. Her grandad is a treat too. He has a physics PhD, twenty-three hamsters and a habit of lighting up next to a gas cooker.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

This is really a teen book and it sits at the very top of this shelf. Meg is fifteen, there's a spring ball, some romance and a fair bit of swearing (a teacher included). In one classroom scuffle over a phone, a girl shouts "perv" at a boy and jokes that he's touching her up. If your reader is younger or you'd rather wait, it'll keep. If they already enjoy stories about older teenagers, Meg's worries will feel very real.

What to read next

If they fall for a girl who'd rather look at the stars than almost anything, try How to Become a Planet. Pluto loves space as much as Meg does, and her summer is about her mum, a pizzeria on the boardwalk and learning to live with depression.