Module 8: Cosmic

Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce

 

Summary:  Liam Digby may be the first twelve-year-old, who looks more like a thirty-year-old to ever go into space.  Liam loves amusement parks and fast rides so much, that he decides to enter a contest to try to win tickets to a new amusement park with one of the fastest rides in the world called, The Rocket.  When Liam wins the tickets and realizes his dad will never let him go, he decides to go disguised as a dad, with a classmate posing as his twelve-year-old daughter.  When Liam reaches the amusement park, he finds out that The Rocket ride is actually a real rocket, which will make an orbit into outer-space.  As Liam works to be the only dad to accompany the kids on the rocket, he finds out that is harder than he thought to be a dad. 

APA Reference: Boyce, F. C. (2008). Cosmic. New York, NY: Harper Collins.

Impressions:  It seems like good science fiction books that aren't about divergent societies, aliens, or Star Wars are somewhat hard to come by these days.  Cosmic is a great science fiction book for a child looking for more of a humorous, almost realistic feeling Sci-Fi book.  It will give them a glimpse of what it would be like to be big, and perhaps even more importantly what it would be like to be a parent.  Since Liam looks like an adult, he gets to do some things many kids can only dream about, like ride the adult rides at amusement parks, enter contests that are only for adults, and even (almost) test drive a Porsche.  Along with the fun though, Liam realizes that he also has to be more responsible, by showing he can handle disciplining and chaperoning children, helping them when they are disappointed, and most importantly figuring out what to do when they accidentally break the spaceship. 

Cosmic is even more enjoyable because of the somewhat sarcastic humor which is found throughout the book.  Liam observes it would be much better to be on earth, since all his "stuff" is there.  His new principal tries to kick him out of class because he is too old, and
when Liam tries to play golf, he decides it is just easier to chip his ball into the golf cart for a ride to the green rather than to play the same way as the other adults.  

Professional Review:

Twelve-year-old Liam Digby is Completely Doomed. He's lost in outer space, incommunicado, in a Chinese spacecraft called Infinite Possibility. To further complicate matters, he's an imposter: a tall-for-his-age kid with premature facial hair pretending to be a dad so he could participate in the secret civilian space flight in the first place--a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory--style contest in which the winning children get to go on the ultimate thrill ride, an actual rocket. The good news is, the view is amazing: "When you're in it, space looks like the biggest firework display ever--except it's on pause.... Even if you're Completely Doomed, you've got to be impressed." On the heels of the Carnegie Medal--winning Millions (2004) and Framed (2006), Cottrell Boyce has created a riveting, affecting, sometimes snortingly funny "what-if" scenario that illuminates the realities of space travel as it thoughtfully examines the nature of adulthood. Liam's musings on what it takes to be a good, responsible father are dryly comical but also charmingly earnest. A high-levity zero-gravity romp. (Science fiction. 10-14) 

[Review of the book Cosmic, by F. B. Cottrell]. (2009, December 01). Kirkus reviews, 52, 320.  Retrieved from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/

Library Uses:  Present this book during a space program, along with other books which have to do with space.  Rent the equipment so that the kids in the program can build their own rockets, and shoot them up hundreds of feet in the air, or invite an astronomer to do a presentation on planets, starts, and rockets.  Moon rocks (pop rocks) would be a fun treat to serve at either program.