By Frank Cottrell Boyce
A twelve-year-old so tall that everyone mistakes him for a grown man ends up posing as a dad, then stranded in space with a rocket full of children counting on him.
Liam Digby is twelve, but he is enormous, tall with a shadow of stubble, so strangers keep assuming he is an adult, and he has started letting them. When his height wins him a spot on the trip of a lifetime, he brings along a classmate named Florida and pretends to be her dad. The catch is that the trip turns out to be the first tourist rocket into space, packed with children and their real fathers, and when things go wrong up there, Liam is the only grown-up the others have to depend on.
This is science fiction that is really about growing up: what makes a good dad, and what it costs to keep pretending you are older than you are. The space part is grounded and exciting, a real space-tourism rocket and a real emergency, but the engine of the story is the comedy of a twelve-year-old in way over his head, trying to act like the responsible adult everyone believes him to be. It is warm, very funny, and it sneaks up on you with genuine feeling about fathers and sons. A great choice for a child who wants a space adventure without anything bleak in it.