hsquared 's review for:

See You in the Cosmos by Jack Cheng

5.0

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Alex is excited for his first trip to the Southwest High-Altitude Rocket Festival, aka SHARF. It will be fun to finally meet his friends on Rocketforum and of course to launch his rocket. So he's devastated when he's told at the train station that as an eleven-year-old he's not allowed to ride the train without an adult. There's not a lot of adults in Alex's life: his dad died when he was three, his mom seems to be barely functioning--with quite a few (in Alex's words) "quiet days"--and his older brother is several states away in Los Angeles trying to make it as a sports agent. Fortunately, a sympathetic young adult pretends to be his older brother so that he can get on the train, launching Alex--and his dog, Carl Sagan--on an unforgettable hero's journey. Alex narrates his adventures in a series of iPod recordings that he intends to put in his rocket to send to outer space, just like his hero Carl Sagan did with his Golden Record aboard Voyagers 1 & 2. Cheng's filtering of the story through this very distinctive eleven-year-old voice brilliantly sets the tone for the narrative, though it does require a fair amount of reader sophistication. Alex is a thoughtful, resourceful, and inquisitive child, whose meandering narratives sometimes obscure the actual events occurring around him--often with hilarious results. Important themes like hope, truth, family and sacrifice abound in this heartwarming middle grade novel, which will appeal to fans of Lisa Graff, Kate DiCamillo, and Holly Goldberg Sloan.