BOON ON THE MOON

A young troublemaker on Earth has a chance to be a hero on the moon when he and other colonists face a natural disaster in this middle-grade SF tale.

Byron Barnett’s stirring imagination—and a device he calls a “biomass transducer”—allow him mentally to visit the moon and converse with José Ignacio, a 12-inch toy robot he sees as 7 feet tall. But the Arizonan’s love of adventure sometimes clashes with his parents’ rules. When he defies parental orders and spends his Saturday spelunking, he gets stuck and needs police assistance. Now he’s in legal trouble for excessive use of emergency and utility services. To avoid a hefty fine and hard labor, the Barnetts accept the judge’s third sentence option, “corrective exile.” It’s on the moon, and the entire family can go, as Byron’s engineer father already has a job offer pending there. Along with his parents, the almost 10-year-old Byron and his older brother, Taji, make the move, and he’s soon taking the “lunar school bus” to school and sometimes exploring his new world on his own. But threatening everyone on the moon is an approaching white worm, a space phenomenon that’s part black hole, part wormhole, and all catastrophe. As meteoroids rain down on the moon’s surface, Byron tries rescuing the people, including his family, who missed the lunar evacuation. Huddles’ literary debut is a brisk, delightful story. Though Byron is the undisputed protagonist, each Barnett is well-established. For example, the Barnetts adopted Taji, who is Swedish Kenyan, as they had been friends with his late parents. The highlight, however, is the friendship between Byron and José Ignacio. Byron is unquestionably imagining their conversations, and the generally reluctant José Ignacio is his apparent conscience. Huddles caters to his younger middle-grade readers, defining some of the big words, providing occasional reminders that José Ignacio is a toy, and italicizing dialogue when people are speaking via space helmet intercom. The prose and action are fast-paced and often funny: A bus that swerves to avoid a crashing meteoroid contains passengers “of the screaming variety.” This book launches a prospective series featuring Byron, and the time-jump ending is a clear setup for a sequel.

Exemplary characters enliven a comical lunar romp.