Cosmic
*Starred Review* Liam is a big lad. So big that strangers mistake the 12-year-old for an adult. Even his teachers seem to conflate tall with old. So heaven forbid he should ever make a mistake. Then it&#x2019;s all, &#x201C;You should know better, big lad like you.&#x201D; Life sure is hard for poor, burdened Liam (did I mention the Premature Facial Hair?)&#x2014;until, that is, he decides to enter the Greatest Dad Ever Contest and in short order finds himself on a rocket ship that is off course and 200,000 miles above the earth. Yes, quite a few things&#x2014;some of them cosmic and all of them extremely funny&#x2014;do happen in between. Boyce is a Carnegie Medal&#x2013;winning author, after all (for Millions, 2004), and he knows how to tell a compellingly good story. But in his latest extravagantly imaginative and marvelously good-natured novel he has also written one that is bound to win readers&#x2019; hearts, if not a clutch of big prizes&#x2014;though Cosmic was shortlisted for both the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children&#x2019;s Fiction Prize when it was published in England. There are lots of surprises in Liam&#x2019;s story, and without spoiling any of them by saying more, just know that this is not only a story about big lads, but also about dads and dadliness! Grades 4-7. --Michael Cart