By Stuart Gibbs
Twelve-year-old Dash is stuck and bored on humanity's first moon base when the top scientist turns up dead and he's the only one who thinks it was murder.
It's 2041 and Dashiell Gibson lives on Moon Base Alpha, the first lunar colony, where the food is slime, the toilets are a whole ordeal, and the great adventure the brochure promised turns out to be mostly boredom inside a metal box. Then Dr. Holtz, the base's top scientist, dies after supposedly walking out onto the surface without his spacesuit. An accident, the adults decide. Dash doesn't buy it for a second. He's certain it was murder, and since no one on the base will listen to a twelve-year-old, he starts digging into it himself.
It's science fiction that reads like a mystery, which makes it a good pick for a child who isn't sure space stories are for them. Gibbs actually works out how you'd eat, sleep, and use the bathroom on the moon, and most of that is played for big laughs. Around all the believable detail sits a real whodunit with a short list of suspects, so your child gets to play detective right alongside Dash. It moves fast and stays light.