June 4, 2024 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus
**Spoilers in Strengths**
Roswell Johnson is a dedicated young scientist who pursues information about extraterrestrials. Sadly, his school science fair doesn't appreciate this, giving the award to a baking soda volcano instead of his incisive expose. Roswell lives with his grandparents on their free range chicken farm in Oklahome, and is one of the few Black students at his school, where he has faced some discrimination. His mother died when he was young, and his father was in the military and was killed in Afghanistan. When Roswell is out looking for a chicken, he sees a space ship, and is taken up into it with a tractor beam! The aliens, Nerp (whom Roswell can understand) and Bleep (who is younger and communicates in robotic beeping), study the chicken and return it to Earth, but don't seem to realize that Roswell has also come aboard. He ends up blasting into space with them, and marveling that his dreams have finally come true. He finds out that the aliens are Grays from Grayton and are part of the Milky Way Galactic Alliance that is trying to save Earth from destroying itself. Sadly, their ship is attacked by Reptoids lead by General Xelic, and Roswell and his new acquaintances find themselves in captivity with a variety of other beings, including Cassiopeia Furbottom, a Furgarian, Rob, a Cyborg, and Mank. Stella Stargazer comes to their rescue, but Roswell soon finds out that the Reptoids are in cahoots with Eli Rump, the richest man on Earth who has convinced the US government to implement his ERASE system to protect the planet from asteroids. Rump has gotten his vast wealth from a variety of enterprises, including the Rump Dump luxury toilet, a football team, movies, and a Rump World theme park. They have agreed to put him in complete charge, but Rump has evil motives in mind. Will Roswell and all of the well meaning extraterrestrial beings he meets in his travels be able to save the world from the combined evil of the Reptoids and Rump?
Strengths: Colfer's 2012 Land of Stories books had quite a following for a while; a student even donated one of the books in the series after convincing his parents to buy it for him! There is something silly and pell mell about his narrative style that is appealing to middle grade readers. Roswell has a lot of reasons for being interested in extraterrestrial life; after all, his late father had a tale about seeing a UFO, and named him after the Roswell incident. (For more reliable information on that, I highly recommend Fleming's Crash from Outer Space. There are lots and lots of amusing and quirky space beings that Roswell meets, and he not only gets to save the day, but **SPOILER** (highlight to see) is reunited with his father, who isn't dead, but is being held on a secret lunar base.
Weaknesses: I am not sure where the children't literature community is right now on the topic of white authors writing Black characters, but since Roswell does describe some issues that he has faced because he is Black, I was a bit uncomfortable with this. Colfer's writing tends towards an overuse of tropes and won't win any awards for beauty or creativity, but is serviceable.
What I really think: There are a lot of space adventure books out there like Mbalia and Makonnen's The Last Gate of the Emperor, Nick Brooks' Nothing Interesting Ever Happens to Ethan Fairmont and even Blackwood's Race to Fire Mountain for younger readers that I liked a little better than this one, but if Colfer's work has a large following in your library, this will be a popular title.
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