Last Summer in Outer Space

by Joshua S. Levy

Overview

Jack's eighth-grade year aboard the PSS 118 is coming to an end. And the students and faculty of the best public schoolship in the galaxy (if it does say so itself) are on the verge of completing their mission. If all goes well, they'll soon foil the sinister alien plot that's put all of humanity in danger.

But this is still middle school. So all does not go well.

When the original plan backfires, it's up to Jack, Ari, and Becka to take on the evil Minister one more time and make the galaxy safer for everyone.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781728486192
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/01/2023
Series:	Adventures of the PSS 118 , #3
Pages:	232
Product dimensions:	5.75(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.81(d)
Age Range:	10 - 11 Years

About the Author

Joshua S. Levy was born and raised in Florida. After teaching middle school (yes, including seventh and eighth grade) for a little while, Josh went to law school. He lives with his wife and children in New Jersey, where he practices as a lawyer. Unfortunately, outer space doesn't come up in court nearly as often as he'd like.

Editorial Reviews

"Levy artfully folds serious personal and parental issues into his less-than-serious round of chases, narrow squeaks, team building, and . . . space battles on the way to a happy resolution and a delayed but properly heartwarming eighth grade graduation ceremony."—Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

2023-05-09
Three intrepid middle schoolers and a hamster who, unfortunately, talks set out on a last, desperate mission to save humanity.

It seems that the seven civilizations, including ours, have been suddenly emptied of their sentient races by the ruthless Elvidian dictator dubbed the Minister, and only Public School Spaceship 118, piloted by hotshot 13-year-olds Ari, Becka, and Jack, has a chance of eluding the teeming Elvidian war fleets to secretly plant in each system the high-tech devices that can restore the missing populations. Luckily (as it turns out), the trio gets some unexpected help after Doctor Shrew, Ari’s beloved hamster, passes through a mysterious beam and emerges able to make outrageous—but who (or, more properly, Who) knows, maybe justified—demands to be recognized as a “Scion of the Old Ones” and an “immortal time-traveling hamster god.” Levy artfully folds serious personal and parental issues into his less-than-serious round of chases, narrow squeaks, team building, and (poorly choreographed, but aren’t they all?) space battles on the way to a happy resolution and a delayed but properly heartwarming eighth grade graduation ceremony. Along with a temperamental, pun-loving AI, the cast includes a nonbinary student and other cues of diversity; dark-skinned Ari has two dads and is Jewish.

Typical middle-school-in-space experiences with a bit of worlds-saving and maybe the odd Time Lord thrown in. (Science fiction. 9-13)

Kirkus Reviews