See you in the cosmos

Review by New York Times Review

ON BOARD THE Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, launched by NASA nearly 40 years ago, is the Golden Record. This disc contains images and sounds from Earth, things like the wind, thunder, bird songs, whale songs, music, laughter and human greetings in many languages. A message in a bottle released into "the cosmic ocean," as the astronomer Carl Sagan described it, the Golden Record is meant to convey a sense of life on Earth to intelligent creatures in space. Alex Petroski admires Carl Sagan so much he named his dog after him. He's making his own Golden Record - a Golden iPod - to launch into space on the Voyager 3, a rocket he is building. Alex narrates his story to an imagined audience of "intelligent beings millions of light-years away." This narration - intercut with the voices of others when Alex is unable to record - makes up the entire text of Jack Cheng's debut novel, "See You in the Cosmos," a strategy that works beautifully thanks to the charm, directness and subtle emotion of Alex's voice. Alex is an unusual boy who lives alone with his mother in Colorado. She has "quiet days" that she spends lying on the sofa watching TV, staring at the ceiling, or disappearing on long walks through their suburban subdivision. Eleven-year-old Alex does the grocery shopping and cooking. His 24-year-old brother, Ronnie, a sports agent in Los Angeles, sends money when he can, and for extra income Alex has a part-time job at a gas station. Alex thinks a lot about his father, who died when he was 3. Ronnie tells him to "forget about Dad," but Alex can't, so he joins Ancestry.com to find out more. But his first priority is getting to the Southwest High-Altitude Rocket Festival, or SHARF, a contest held in the desert in New Mexico. There he hopes to launch the Voyager 3 into space with the Golden iPod on board. On the way to the festival he is befriended by two fellow rocket enthusiasts, Zed and Steve. They are roommates and seem to be in their early 20s, which is useful because they can drive Alex around and help him with things like setting up his tent. In fact, except for Alex, almost all of the characters are adults, which is unusual for a middle-grade novel. This can feel a bit like cheating, since, as a rule, we like our child heroes to solve their problems by themselves, and Alex uses adults to do things a child can't (like driving). But Alex is at least as responsible as the adults around him. At the same time, his responsibilities and his unusual mind isolate him from children his own age. A boy with no father and a strange mother may seem pitiful to his peers at school, but the adults Alex meets admire his courage, honesty and resourcefulness, which brings those qualities to the foreground and allows young readers to admire them, too. Zed and Steve are with Alex when he gets a message from Ancestry.com: A man with the same name and birth date as his father's has turned up in Las Vegas. Could his father still be alive somehow, and living in Nevada? As the three set out for Las Vegas to solve the mystery, Alex recounts the road trip's joys and catastrophes to his unseen, unknown audience of extraterrestrials. What are these aliens like? "Do you have light brown skin like I do or smooth gray skin like a dolphin or spiky green skin like a cactus?" Alex wonders. In Alex, Cheng has created an endearing and believable character, a sweet spirit, loving and forgiving, yet not unrealistically so. His curiosity and open-mindedness extend to his fellow humans too, as he reconnects with Ronnie and meets family members he didn't know he had. He considers himself "a pacifist," but he gets angry when it's time to get angry. The more he learns the truth about his family, the more he begins to wonder what a family really is. And if yours isn't working well, this novel asks, how do you make a better one? In the end, Alex is trying to figure out "the meaning of love and bravery and truth," filtering these concepts through his scientific mind. "What if the times when we feel love and act brave and tell the truth are all the times we're four-dimensional," he says, "the times we're as big and everywhere as the cosmos, the times when we remember, like REALLY remember, really KNOW, that we're made of starstuff." Alex's voice stayed with me. If extraterrestrials ever did find his Golden iPod, they would think Earthlings were wonderful. NATALIE STANDIFORD'S novels for children and teenagers include, most recently, "The Only Girl in School."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 24, 2017]

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Review by Booklist Review

Eleven-year-old Alex Petroski is from Rockview, Colorado, U.S.A., Planet Earth. He is recording sounds on his iPod to send into space, just like astronomer Carl Sagan did on his Voyager Golden Records (Alex admires Mr. Sagan so much that he named his dog after him). As he gets ready to attend a rocket festival in Albuquerque, Alex also records an audio journal of his life. Since his mom is not functional and his dad is dead, Alex travels by train solo with his dog. When Ancestry.com alerts him to a man with a name and birth date that match his father's, Alex determines to go to Las Vegas to search for him and ends up losing canine Carl Sagan. This book's strength is its exuberant and utterly believable first-person narrator: Alex is portrayed as intelligent and naive, irritating and endearing. But it's his earnestness that attracts a motley collection of adults who help when his mom goes missing. Good for both budding astronomers and fans of road trip books.--Young, Michelle Copyright 2016 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Alex, an 11 year-old boy who loves astronomy, makes a series of recordings to send into outer space in an effort to communicate with aliens. He plans to launch them using a rocket at the Southwest High-Altitude Rocket Festival in New Mexico. Leaving his mother, who is neglectful and bedridden due to depression, behind in Colorado, he heads to the festival with his dog, Carl Sagan. His trip results in new friends, clues about his long-dead father, and a reunion with his half-sister. The book is told solely through Alex's recordings, which makes it an ideal fit for audio. De Montebello is an excellent child actor who sounds completely natural as the innocent, earnest, curious protagonist; the other cast members-Michael Crouch, Jason Culp, Graham Halstead, and Brittany Pressley-are not quite as memorable. The audiobook effectively creates the illusion of spontaneous recordings with sound effects and background noise added in. This creative and unusual audiobook adds an extra dimension to the written work and brings the story to life in a way that perfectly matches the subject. Ages 10-up. A Dial hardcover. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 4-6-Using only transcripts of podcast recordings to tell a story might be limiting for most narratives, but here it allows 11-year-old Alex Petroski's naïveté and essentially optimistic and ethical nature to come shining through as he tells of his road trip with his dog, Carl Sagan. The decision to travel to SHARF (Southwest High Altitude Rocket Festival), near Albuquerque, NM, is as matter-of-fact as his choice to address his posts to possible extraterrestrials, who he hopes will find his iPod and figure out how things work on Earth. Alex's mother is clearly less than competent, and his distant brother, Ronnie, lives in Los Angeles, which allows Alex to pursue his intense interest in space and rockets unsupervised. Things go awry from the start, but various helpful characters come to his rescue, enabling Alex to continue his journey away from Rockview, CO, and eventually return to the town. He's an intelligent, likable kid, and readers will enjoy following his journey as he learns who is in his corner when the chips are down. It is eventually revealed that his mother has a mental illness, which shines light on the workings of their relationships and explains how Alex has come to be so self-sufficient. VERDICT A smart read with some serious themes. Give to tweens who love unusual realistic fiction.-Carol A. Edwards, formerly at Denver Public Library © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

If you made a recording to be heard by the aliens who found the iPod, what would you record?For 11-year-old Alex Petroski, it's easy. He records everything. He records the story of how he travels to New Mexico to a rocket festival with his dog, Carl Sagan, and his rocket. He records finding out that a man with the same name and birthday as his dead father has an address in Las Vegas. He records eating at Johnny Rockets for the first time with his new friends, who are giving him a ride to find his dead father (who might not be dead!), and losing Carl Sagan in the wilds of Las Vegas, and discovering he has a half sister. He even records his own awful accident. Cheng delivers a sweet, soulful debut novel with a brilliant, refreshing structure. His characters manage to come alive through the "transcript" of Alex's iPod recording, an odd medium that sounds like it would be confusing but really works. Taking inspiration from the Voyager Golden Record released to space in 1977, Alex, who explains he has "light brown skin," records all the important moments of a journey that takes him from a family of two to a family of plenty. Riveting, inspiring, and sometimes hilarious. (Fiction. 10-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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New Recording 1 6m 19s   Who are you? What do you look like? Do you have one head or two? More? Do you have light brown skin like I do or smooth gray skin like a dolphin or spiky green skin like a cactus? Do you live in a house? I live in a house. My name is Alex Petroski and my house is in Rockview, Colorado, United States of America, planet Earth. I am eleven years and eight months old and the United States is two hundred forty-two years old and Earth is 4.5 billion years old. I'm not sure how old my house is. Maybe you live on an ice planet, so instead of houses you have igloos and your hands are icepicks and your feet are snowshoes and you're covered in gold-brown fur like Carl Sagan. That's my dog. I named him after my hero, Dr. Carl Sagan, who was one of the greatest astronomers of our time. Dr. Sagan helped send Voyagers 1 and 2 into deep space and put a Golden Record on them with all kinds of sounds from our planet, like whales singing and people saying hello in fifty-five languages, and the laugh of a newborn baby and the brainwaves of a woman in love and mankind's greatest music like Bach and Beethoven and Chuck Berry. Maybe you've heard it? I found my pup Carl Sagan in the parking lot at Safeway, and when I saw him he was dirty and hungry and hiding behind a dumpster. I said, Come here boy, don't be scared, but he was crying and curling his tail because we were still strangers at that point. I told him I'm not going to hurt him, I'm a pacifist, and I guess he believed me because when I picked him up he didn't even fight me or try to run. 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. I don't know what kind of shows you guys have but the ones my mom likes are game shows and judge shows and shows with five ladies sitting in a fake living room. When I'm at Benji's house we watch Cartoon Network because his family has On Demand, and Benji loves Battlemorph Academy and so do a lot of the kids at school. I think that show's OK but I prefer the more classic cartoons like Dexter's Laboratory to be honest. That Dexter is one smart kid. I hate it when his sister Didi goes in and messes up everything. I'm glad I don't have a sister to mess up my stuff, especially when I'm working on my rocket. I do have an older brother though. His name is Ronnie but everyone calls him RJ except my mom and me and some of his old high school friends because his middle name is James. Ronnie's a lot older, he's more than twice how old I am. He's twenty-four. He lives in Los Angeles and his job is an agent, and I know what you're thinking but he's not that kind of agent. He's not a spy or Bond, James Bond kind of agent. He doesn't fight terrorists or bust drug dealers or play poker with super-villains. He helps basketball and football players get shoe commercials. But he does go to fancy parties and wear sunglasses, so I guess it's kind of the same. Ronnie wouldn't let me keep Carl Sagan at first. He never likes it when my mom and me spend his money on stuff that isn't groceries or bills for our house. When I told him about Carl Sagan over the phone he said, Uh-uh, we can't afford a dog. I said I think we CAN afford a dog because I've been getting the on-sale food from Safeway and making my own sandwiches for school instead of buying hot lunch, and also I got a part-time job helping Mr. Bashir stack magazines at his gas station. I said, I've been saving the money for my rocket but I can use some of it to buy Carl Sagan's food because he's not that big of a dog, and besides, you should come back to Rockview sometime and meet him in person--I mean, in dog--before you make any brash decisions. That was almost a year ago and Ronnie still hasn't met Carl Sagan in dog yet. But I'm sure when they finally do meet that Ronnie's going to love him because who can turn down that face? Huh? Who can turn down that face? That's right, I'm talking about you, Carl Sagan. Do you want to say hello? Come on boy, say hello. Carl Sagan doesn't want to say hello. He's just staring at me like, What are you doing? Who are you talking to? Is there a person in there? I don't see a person in there. There's no person in here boy, it's just an iPod. You watched me spray-paint it gold, remember? I'm making recordings so when intelligent beings millions of light-years away find it one day they'll know what Earth was like, do you understand? He doesn't understand. Now he's looking out the window. He's easily distracted. So then I . . . um . . . What was I talking about? Anyway, I thought that maybe you guys already got my hero's Golden Record but maybe you don't have record players where you are, or you used to but not anymore. The only ones I've ever seen are the used ones at Goodwill and nobody buys them because iPods and iPhones fit in your pocket better. Also, this iPod can hold a lot more than a record. I already uploaded everything from the Golden Record onto here and there was so much room left, and then I found out you can make recordings too, so I thought maybe I could record some sounds from Earth that you haven't already heard. Plus I'll explain everything that's happening behind the scenes while I get ready for my launch. It'll be like Blu-ray bonus features! There's SO much I want to tell you guys. But it'll have to wait because Carl Sagan's sitting by the door because he wants to go pee and poop. And I still have to pack everything for my trip! I'll tell you about SHARF and my rocket next time.         New Recording 2 6m 41s   Hi again, guys! I promised I'd tell you more about SHARF and I'm a man of my word. SHARF is a rocket festival that's happening in the desert near Albuquerque, New Mexico. I'm launching my rocket there in three days! The official name is the Southwest High-Altitude Rocket Festival but everyone on Rocketforum.org just calls it SHARF. It's an acronym. Acronyms are words made using the first letter of other words, like how NASA is National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In fourth grade we made acronyms from our own names and I used my full first name even though Mrs. Thompson said I could just use Alex. I wanted to challenge myself. The acronym for my name was:   A stronomer L aunches rockets E arthling X plorer A fraid of spiders N ice person D edicated E nthusiastic R ocket enthusiast   I made one for my hero too. It was:   C osmic A ll-time hero R eally smart L ikes science   Everyone on Rocketforum is really REALLY excited about SHARF. There's a post at the top that says OFFICIAL SHARF THREAD and it has SO many replies already. Frances19 said she's dyeing her hair a special color for SHARF and Ganymede and Europa were talking about how much fun last year's was, and Calexico posted a bunch of cool tips about camping, like if you leave your shoes outside your tent at night make sure you turn them upside down in the morning because there might be scorpions. He said they show up in pairs too, so if you find one scorpion you'll usually find another. They're very romantic creatures. I already packed my rocket and toothbrush and Ronnie's old tent, and a 2-in-1 shampoo/conditioner because it'll save me some room. I packed Carl Sagan's special kibble also--they're going to have barbecue food at SHARF but Carl Sagan can't eat it because he has a sensitive digestive system. I still have more to pack but I needed a break, so I came up to the roof of my house. I love lying down on the hood of a car like Dr. Arroway in the movie Contact but my mom doesn't drive anymore, so I just come up on our ladder to the roof. I usually come up here at night so that way I'm closer to the stars, even though it's only one story closer. I like coming up here during the day too though. Our subdivision is on a hill, and when I'm up here I can see really far. I can see the train tracks and Burger King and I can see Mr. Bashir's gas station which has a flagpole outside with the biggest American flag in Rockview, it's SO huge. Way in the distance I can see Mount Sam and the big white letter R for Rockview on the side near the bottom. One time before Ronnie's homecoming game against our town's rivals, Belmar, some kids from Belmar High came in the middle of the night and changed the R to a B, and the next day Ronnie was so mad that he ran for five touchdowns and our team kicked their team's butts. I guess their plan backfired. Sometimes after my mom has one of her quiet days she'll need fresh air so she'll go for a walk, and when I'm up here I can see where she walks. Like right now she's walking toward Justin Mendoza's house, which is down our street toward the bottom of the hill, and when she gets to Justin's house she'll either turn left toward Mill Road or turn right toward Benji's subdivision. I can't see that as good because it's surrounded by trees. Justin's the one who gave me this iPod, actually! He was a grade lower than Ronnie in high school and he used to come over and play with Ronnie all the time, but he didn't move away after college like Ronnie did. I went over there yesterday to buy the iPod from him for twenty dollars like we agreed, but then he said I could just have it for free because the battery sucks. He went inside his house to get it and I waited in his garage, and I was looking at the Honda motorcycle he's always working on and I squeezed one of the handles, but when I did a screw fell out, so I put it on a blue rag with a bunch of other parts. Justin came back with the iPod and charger and I said, Hey Justin, your job is a mechanic, shouldn't you be done working on your motorcycle already? He said his problem is he'll think he's done but then he'll ride around on it for a while and think of something better to do, so he'll take it apart and start over again. I told him he should just download a simulator for his motorcycle like the one I found for my rocket called OpenRocket. It lets me put in different motors and change the nose cone and fins and everything, and it tells me exactly how high the rocket's going to go so that way I don't even have to buy any parts until I'm ready to launch. I told him that's how I designed Voyager 3, my rocket that's going to carry his iPod into space. Justin said, So it's going to be your first launch ever? And I said that's right, and he said, Shouldn't you do some test launches? And I said, That's the whole point of the simulator, it's so I don't have to, DUH! Justin laughed and he asked me how's Ronnie doing, and I told him Ronnie's busy like usual with his prospective clients. A prospective client is someone who Ronnie wants to want Ronnie to be their agent, so he takes them out to lunch and he pays for their lunch. Justin said he really looks up to Ronnie, he's always thought of him like an older brother, and I said that's funny because I've always thought of him like an older brother too, and Justin laughed again. He told me to let him know how my launch goes and I said I will, and I told him he might want to check the handle on his motorcycle to make sure there aren't any parts missing. Excerpted from See You in the Cosmos by Jack Cheng All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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