The Great Space Race

Joshua Mowll (author)

Walker Books, UK: August 2010

ISBN: 9781406309379

Genres: adventure, humour

Issues: creativity, family, identity

The Crankshaw family is rather short of funds at present. So short, in fact, that an unpleasantly determined man with two large and vicious dogs has removed most of their furniture and is threatening to come back and take away anything else that might be worth something.

Somehow, since his mum died, Ace's musician-inventor father hasn't quite managed to stay on top of things - and not just financially. The family's music gigs are all that are keeping food on the table; nobody has much faith in Arthur Crankshaw's next invention (a Soviet fighter jet-propelled BBQ) given their father's capacity for disaster. So when fourteen year old Ace sees the advertisement for a $10million(US) prize for the first private rocket to land on the moon, he decides that he can find fame and the family's fortune in one madcap adventure. If Ace can convince his older sister to go along with the plan, is it possible that Crankshaws and their robotic monkey can actually get their rocket off the ground, let alone to the moon? And can they foil an evil attempt at world domination at the same time?

Completely crazy and barreling along at a positively manic pace, The Great Space Race is a hilarious adventure that will keep readers both entertained and gasping at the sheer craziness of it all. The story is presented as Ace's private notebook and the highly visual layout will attract many children who might otherwise find a novel challenging. While the narrative is typed out, most pages have drawings, cartoons, photographs, plans, diagrams and annotations - not all of them related to the story. Mowll is a graphic artist and his understanding of visual readers shines from every page, as does his Python-esque sense of humour. Definitely not a book to be judged by its cover, The Great Space Race has a touch of Douglas Adams, a large dose of Action Adventure and a sprinkling of Cartoon all mixed together to form a brew that will have younger readers proclaiming: ‘Wicked!'