Dave Lowe

If you like travelling but, like me, don't really have the time or money to drop everything and head off, this is a pretty good book to take you off to somewhere exotic. It suffers in places from the kind of mistakes that an editor - or better proofreader - would have picked up on, and Lowe is prone to recapitulation (just like most American TV shows), but if you can look past these minor defects, you'll find some extremely memorable tales inside.

Nine year-old Benjamin Jinks and his grumpy hamster, Jasper Stinkybottom are back - and this time they are shooting for the moon! Benjamin is a very normal boy who hates maths, but dreams of sending his hamster into space. Stinky is a hamster-genius, who has grudgingly accepted Ben's challenge - But can the pair win the science fair prize ahead of their scheming neighbours? Or will their experiment bring them back down to Earth with a thump?