You can't have my planet but take my brother please by James Mihaley

Giles feels invisible between his perfect older brother and prodigy younger sister. He's still hurt that his brother grew up without him and seems to think his grades are more important than their tree house business. Then the aliens show up and suddenly Giles is the only one who can save the human race from eviction! Can Giles finally get something right?

There are three main themes to this book; cutesy/creepy robots and aliens (definitely below the Pilkey line), Giles' obsession with having a girlfriend and getting kissed (very middle school) and "if all the kids just work together they can clean up the city and save the environment). It's also 243 pages long.

There's not a lot of science fiction for kids out there, so I was frustrated by this book. It had a lot of promise and good stuff going on. The "humans have destroyed the planet" plotline was cliched, but the being evicted spin was funny and fresh. The robots and aliens would have made a good younger chapter book, although they lacked the depth of, say, Pamela Service's Alien Agent series. The middle school/feeling like a loser plotline was good, but didn't mesh well with the other parts of the book.

Verdict: Funny and has interesting ideas, but too long and scattered for my audience. The older kids who would be interested in the girlfriend part will roll their eyes at the robot/alien line and the younger kids will be discouraged by the length and uninterested in the girlfriend line. Split it into three books and I'd buy them all!

ISBN: 9780312618919; Published 2012 by Feiwel; Borrowed from the library