By Jack Cheng
Eleven-year-old Alex sets out across the country with a homemade rocket and a dog named Carl Sagan, recording it all for the aliens. What he never quite says is that no one has been taking care of him at home.
Alex Petroski is eleven, he loves Carl Sagan, and he's built a rocket to launch his iPod into space so aliens can hear what Earth is like. The whole book is those recordings, in his voice, and it's one of the great voices in middle grade. He gets himself to a rocket festival in New Mexico. He collects an odd assortment of grown-ups along the way. He heads to Las Vegas because he's found a man living there with his dead father's name and birthday. And underneath everything he says, in the gap between his words and what you can actually hear, is the thing Alex never records: his mom has her quiet days, his older brother Ronnie is in New York and not picking up, and Alex has been more or less raising himself for a long time. He isn't sad about any of it. To him this is just what a Tuesday is.
I'd hand this to the older child who's been doing some of the caring at home, because it's the rare book that lets that child be the hero of an adventure instead of a case study. Alex isn't a sad boy. He's funny and relentless and busy, and the reason the book hits so hard is that he narrates being left alone in the same bright tone he uses for rocket fuel, because he doesn't know it isn't normal. A child who's been quietly holding a household together may recognize that voice right away, and some may find it a real relief to watch other people finally notice Alex and come help. It's easily the heaviest book here, and it's also the funniest.