Mark Powers’s Space Detectives is a very silly sci-fi mystery for 9 year olds about two boys selling ice cream on a space station, desperate for a case to solve.<\/p>\n
Connor and Ethan, both ten, are spending the summer on Starville, a whole city orbiting the Earth under a glass dome. It’s home to over a million humans and aliens. Back home they solved the case of their head teacher’s missing letter opener. (Long story short, magpie.) Up here they’ve had one case in a week, and the “stolen” fob watch was in the owner’s other waistcoat.<\/p>\n
They make a brilliant double act. Connor is tall and gawky, like an ostrich in glasses, and he memorised every alien species on the rocket trip up. Ethan is short, bouncy and far more interested in snacks. Connor keeps adjusting his glasses. Ethan keeps licking ice cream off the machine.<\/p>\n
Then a slimy purple Tufted Grotsnobbler in a tiny sequinned cowboy hat snatches a girl’s bag. There’s a hover-scooter chase through the park, straight through somebody’s picnic. There’s a party at the Supreme Governor’s mansion with a zero-gravity bouncy castle. And then a newsflash. Starville has broken out of orbit and is heading straight for the Moon. The crash is less than three hours away!<\/p>\n
It’s packed with jokes. Their best-selling flavour is Extra Minty Grapefruit and Smoky Bacon (would your reader try it?). Uncle Nick’s clever smartsuits keep turning Connor’s tuxedo into a clown costume at the worst possible moments. And the aliens are gloriously daft, from the Plutonian Cow People to a fire-breathing Snarltoothed Grizloid that can only be sent to sleep with the note middle C.<\/p>\n
There’s a real puzzle under all the silliness too. It opens on a mystery figure chuckling evilly at a laptop, who then goes downstairs because dinner’s ready. It was fish fingers. Who is it? Your reader will be trying to work it out right alongside the boys.<\/p>\n
The chapters are short and it hardly stops for breath, so it’s great for a reader who likes things to keep moving. If you’ve got a child who loves a funny detective story and a bit of space nonsense, this one’s easy to love.<\/p>\n
If the jokes land, Mark Powers also wrote Spy Toys. It’s about a teddy bear with a faulty snuggle chip, who hugs a metal test dummy so hard it bends out of shape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mark Powers’s Space Detectives is a very silly sci-fi mystery for 9 year olds about two boys selling ice cream on a space station, desperate for a case to solve. Connor and Ethan, both ten, are spending the summer on Starville, a whole city orbiting the Earth under a glass dome. It’s home to over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13253,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"lr_next_read_post_id":8703,"lr_next_read_anchor":"Spy Toys","lr_seo_hook":"A space station on course for the Moon, and two boys desperate for a case."},"book_tag":[1046],"age_group":[24],"book_type":[1044],"book_author":[684],"class_list":["post-8672","our-books","type-our-books","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","book_tag-sci-fi-books","age_group-books-for-9-year-olds","book_type-paid","book_author-mark-powers"],"yoast_title":"Space Detectives by Mark Powers | Little Reads","yoast_metadesc":"A space station on course for the Moon, and two boys desperate for a case. For ages 9+. 3,000+ books in the Little Reads app. 7-day free trial.","acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n