See You in the Cosmos

I loved this book so much. I love that the main character was biracial. I love that it was incredibly geeky and STEM-positive. I love the epistolary format of the novel, which is one of my favorite storytelling techniques. I love that the book tackled some really adult issues, trusting that the target audience is mature enough to understand things like mental illness and infidelity.

But most of all, I love Alex, the precocious and charming 11-year-old (but 13 in responsibility years!) protagonist. He sets off with the goal of firing a homemade rocket into space, and has been recording messages to aliens on his iPod, which he plans on attaching to the rocket. After his rocket fails, he continues using his iPod to record messages. Alex is show more optimistic, resourceful, independent, and frighteningly naive. His best friend is his dog, Carl Sagan, who he named after his hero.

The book spans his trip from Colorado to Albuquerque for the Southwest High-Altitude Rocket Festival (SHARF), and then to Las Vegas, and then Los Angeles, before returning home to Colorado. He makes friends and finds out family secrets along the way, and in the end is forced to confront some hard truths about his life.

I won't lie -- I was crying by the end of the book. I wanted to give Alex (all the characters, really, but especially Alex) the biggest hug -- what he would call a "real hug".

This book reminded me of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time because of the young unreliable narrator, and having to read between the lines to figure out just what was going on.

Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley. show less

Alex Petroski, you're my hero. This book has been compared to Wonder, which I found unrealistic, and The Curious Incident of the Dog..., which I didn't like. See You in the Cosmos is so much better.

Alex, an 11 year old boy who loves rockets and his dog Carl Sagan, named after his hero, inadvertently goes on a road trip when he tries to attend SHARF (Southwest High Altitude Rocket Festival) to fly his own rocket in the competition.

Alex is a very independent and resilient kid, who finds a way to do what he wants to do, even without any parental guidance. His Mom seems unavailable, his brother is in another city, and his father is dead.

We don't find out what's going on with his Mom till later in the book, although we know something is show more not right, because Alex does all the cooking, and his mother watches a lot of tv and doesn't take a lot of interest in his life.

Alex's optimistic and creative attitude win him friends along the way to SHARF. After SHARF, the trip continues with two men he met on the way to the festival, one of whom is currently practicing a vow of silence. They visit Las Vegas, where Alex finds that his family is larger than he thought, and then on to LA, before he goes back to home to Colorado.

The novel is told in the form of an audio journal Alex is making on his iPod. He plans to launch his rocket containing the iPod into outer space, in hopes that aliens will someday find it and learn about humans.

There is so much to like in this story of family, friendship, creativity and bravery. It moved me more than anything I have read in a long time, and it's a middle grade novel. Go figure. show less

It’s a cliché to say about a book that you didn’t want it to end, but sometimes the cliché is the truth. So it is with this middle-grade book like no other, one that children and adults alike will adore.

Science geek Alex Petroski would be the first to point out that his real age may be 11, but his “responsibility age” would be much, much older. And, readers, you will agree with him. His father died when Alex was 3, his older brother — 24-year-old Ronnie, a college sports star turned sports agent — has moved West, and Alex’s mother becomes so incapacitated (probably due to severe depression) that it’s Alex who cooks, shops, and cleans. Here’s a scene when Alex adopts a stray, naming the dog after his hero, the late show more Carl Sagan:

Then I took him back to my house and my mom was lying on the sofa watching her shows like she usually does, and I told her I got the groceries but I got a pup also and I’ll take good care of him I promise, I’ll play with him and feed him and give him a bath and all the stuff you’re supposed to say.

And she said, You’re in the way! So I got out of the way. My best friend Benji’s mom would freak if he brought home a pup, but my mom, she doesn’t care as long as I make us dinner and don’t bother her when she’s watching her shows. She’s a pretty cool mom.

So you see how it is. Brother Ronnie moved to Los Angeles and, while he pays the bills for his mother and little brother, Ronnie hasn’t visited in more than a year; Alex has pretty much been on his own.

Alex wants to emulate Dr. Sagan and the Golden Record he launched into space in 1977 in the hopes of announcing our human presence to any alien life. Alex gets a donated iPod, spray-paints it gold, transfers the information from Sagan’s Golden Record onto it and adds additional entries in which he makes observations on the human condition for the aliens’ edification. When Alex decides to make the journey from Rockview, Colorado, to the Southwest High-Altitude Rocket Festival (SHARF) in Albuquerque so as to launch his Golden iPod into space aboard Voyager 3, there’s no adult who’s going to dissuade him. Along the way to Albuquerque (and beyond), Alex fortuitously for him finds himself relying on the kindness of quite a few strangers — and, fortuitously for us, he captures his adventures in a series of daily recordings along the way.

Author Jack Cheng hooked me from the very first transmission chapter with this heart-warming tale of a boy who reaches for the stars and finds more than he ever imagined. Highly, highly, highly recommended.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley, Penguin Young Readers Group and Dial Books in exchange for an honest review. show less

Again, hyper voice, fast pace, too much for me. Still, I couldn't put it down, read it all in one night (despite it being longer than most MG). Most adult readers will want a hankie handy.

Will kids like it? Maybe for the fun and adventure, but Alex is such a little prig, such a goody-goody, I don't know if they'll put up with him. I mean, obviously he's a role model, and young readers prefer regular kids as characters, right?

Eleven-year-old Alex is obsessed with all things astronomy and is building a rocket on which he plans to include a "golden iPod" full of his recordings for extraterrestrial beings. Alex and his dog (named Carl Sagan after Alex's hero) board a train in Colorado and head to New Mexico for a rocket-launching festival, and their adventures begin. As Alex embarks on the road trip of a lifetime, he makes friends and learns truths about his fractured family.

This book was a compelling read, with good writing and wonderful characters. I absolutely fell in love with Alex and think other readers will as well. The supporting cast is also lovely -- unique yet entirely recognizable. The story goes in directions I didn't expect and is a roller coaster show more of emotions along the way. Being written as "recordings" was an unusual way of presenting the story but it works for this particular plot and doesn't feel in any way gimmicky. The conclusion was a little more open-ended that I would have liked, and those who like neatly tied resolutions might be disappointed.

That all being said, I'd be rather hesitant to recommend this book to a young reader. The fact that Alex travels alone, stays with strangers, and manages to come out of that all relatively unscathed is unfortunately rather unlikely. I'd be terrified that susceptible readers might think it was a good idea to go off on their own. There are other rather heavy elements in this book including mental illness, abuse and neglect, and bodily injury, to name a few. Such dark subject matter may not go over well with every reader. I almost feel like this book is better for adults, especially as some of the humor seems to come out of the reader understanding when Alex is naively wrong. At the least I think caregivers might want to read this with or alongside their child to help them work through the more difficult topics. show less

Alex is making iPod recordings that he hopes to one day send into space for other life to find. The insights of this 11-year-old are both profound and innocent at the same time. He thinks about other life forms and the possibilities in ways most people wouldn't and it's brilliant. As he records, though, we learn about a troubled home life that he doesn't recognize as troubled, which is sad but also good in that it protects him (for a time) from the truth. I love his voice and the unique perspectives brought to the story by the characters he meets when he sets out first for a rocket convention and then on a quest to find his father.

Minor quibbles. Alex refers to some initialisms as acronyms. He refers to some similes as metaphors. Given show more the intelligence of his character, those should have been presented correctly. Also, he's 11 and of course kids that age (people of any age) cry, but his behavior near the end to get his own way seemed out of sync with the rest of the book. And I really didn't get why one of the first people he meets ends up in an ambulance, other than to conveniently force Alex to meet someone who was going to the rocket conference.

Those small things aside, it's a must for ages ten to adult. I'll leave you with two of my favorite quotes in Alex's voice:

"The launchurdles are gone and the registration tents are gone . . . and in the morning we'll all be gone too. So if someone drives by tomorrow and looks out the window of their car, all they'll see is flat desert. They won't even know anything was here, because they looked too late."

"Even after the sun was gone the clouds above were still bright red, and the horizon was gold and the water was purple and they should've sent a poet." show less

A beautiful and poignant story about a neglected, space-obsessed kid who makes his way to an amateur rocket-launching rally, and discovers family (some literal family, some not) among lost and lonely souls. See You in the Cosmos is one of those books that has a straightforward story for younger readers -- a road trip story, and a story about creating community -- but in between the words, Cheng implies conflicts and challenges that only older and wiser readers can see. The book deals matter-of-factly with serious mental illness.