Too Much Space!

by Jonathan Roth, Jonathan Roth (Illustrator)

Overview

Meet space-school attendee Bob and his alien bestie Beep in this start to an outrageously funny and action-packed chapter book series that’s great for “kids who love funny stories but may be too young for books like ­Diary of a Wimpy Kid” (School Library Journal) from debut author Jonathan Roth!

Astro Elementary is a school near Saturn attended by the bravest, brightest, most elite kids in the galaxy…and Bob. Bob never wanted to go to fourth grade in dark, dangerous space. He even tried to fail the admissions test by bubbling in “C” for every answer—and turned out to be the only kid on Earth to get a perfect score!

Bob feels he couldn’t be more misplaced at his school—until he meets Beep. Beep is an alien from the planet Orth who was kicked off his home world for being too small. The instant Bob finds him, Beep adopts Bob as his new mother. Soon Bob can’t turn around without bumping into Beep’s squishy little body. Together, they make the perfect team. And Bob logs their adventures on his space blog, or SPLOG, with Beep providing the illustrations.

In their first adventure, Bob is humiliated on a field trip to Pluto when his tongue gets stuck to the ice. Not even Beep can keep Bob from becoming the laughing stock of the school. Bob has to find a way to completely change his personality, just in time for their next treacherous field trip—to the gaping mouth of a super massive black hole!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781481488549
Publisher:	Aladdin
Publication date:	03/13/2018
Series:	Beep and Bob , #1
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
Lexile:	480L (what's this?)
File size:	12 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	6 - 9 Years

About the Author

Author-illustrator Jonathan Roth is a public elementary school art teacher in Maryland who likes reading, writing, drawing, cycling, and napping. Though he has never left the Earth, he has met four of the astronauts who have gone to the moon. Beep and Bob is his first series. 

Read an Excerpt

Too Much Space!

Dear Kids of the Past,

Hi. My name’s Bob and I live and go to school in space. That’s right, space. Pretty sporky, huh? I’m the new kid this year at Astro Elementary, the only school in orbit around one of the outer planets. There’s just one micro little problem:

SPACE IS THE MOST TERRIFYING PLACE EVER!

If you’ve been to space, you know what I mean: It’s dark, cold, airless—and it goes on for infinity! Okay, maybe it ends at some super huge wall. But what’s behind that wall? More space? Bigger walls? Giant space spiders?!

Just kidding about that last one. There are no spiders in space.

Are there?

No really, are there?

Beep just said to say hi. Beep is a young alien who got separated from his 600 siblings when they were playing hide-and-seek in some asteroid field. Then he floated around the void for a while, until he ended up here. Sad, huh?



You know what’s even sadder? I was the one who found him knocking on our space station’s air lock door and let him in. Now he thinks I’m his new mother!

On the bright side, everyone at school says Beep is super cute and fun to have around. And since he won’t leave my side, they let him join my class as the school’s first alien student. He’s definitely a quick learner—he picks up languages in no time, and his grades are already better than mine!

Anyway, I’m writing these space logs (or splogs, as we call them) partly to tell you all about my hectic life, but mostly because it’s an assignment to show you how “great” things are here in the future. At the end of each week I’ll put all my entries into a time-velope and mail it to 200 years ago. If you receive this, please write back; and while you’re at it, please also include a pile of vintage twenty-first-century comic books! Thanks.

Beep will help with the pictures. He’s super talented and loves to draw, though in his excitement he sometimes eats all his pencils.

Hope you enjoy!

Editorial Reviews

Pretty sporky, as Bob would approvingly put it.

Booklist - John Peters

02/01/2018
Gr 1–4—When Bob took the test to go to Astro Elementary, a school on a space station orbiting Saturn, he never thought, and definitely never hoped, he would have a chance of getting in. Little did he know answering "C" for every question would earn him a perfect score. Now in space, Bob is tasked with recording his adventures in a series of space blogs, or splogs, to be sent to the past so readers can learn about the super-cool future. Bob is less than thrilled to be living in space, but when he rescues a lost alien who turns up at the space station door, his school experience turns around. Beep, who treats Bob like his mother, loves to eat socks and sticks close to Bob's side. But Beep, in his confused and naive way, easily gets Bob into trouble. He convinces him to lick the surface of Pluto while they are on a field trip because it tastes like an orange ice pop, sending the two into a spiral of an adventure. And all Bob wants to do is make it through the school year, and maybe get his crush Lani to like him. Roth creates many unusual space terms and infuses the story with humor and gross details that are sure to make kids giggle. Beep is a cute and fun sidekick and Bob is relatable as an average kid in a not-so-average situation. Illustrations in a simple style add to the silliness of the story. VERDICT A strong addition to any library's chapter book selection. Offer to kids who love funny stories but may be too young for books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid.—Erica Deb, Matawan Aberdeen Public Library, NJ

School Library Journal

2017-12-21
Bob, a human boy, and Beep, an ET, have adventures in space.After answering a multiple-choice test solely with "C," Bob accidentally receives the highest test score on the planet and is invited to Astro Elementary, a school in space—which, according to Bob, is "THE MOST TERRIFYING PLACE EVER!" The spot illustrations (credited by narrator Bob to Beep) portray Bob and the other human characters as light-skinned, including Bob's female classmate Lani—whom he appears to like, though he won't admit it. (On the cover, he appears to have light brown skin, however.) When he answers a knock at the airlock door, Bob finds Beep, an extraterrestrial separated from his family, who adopts Bob as his "Bob-mother." Bob chronicles their adventures as "splogs" addressed to the Kids of the Past; the first is a field trip to Pluto. When Bob foolishly gets his tongue stuck on the dwarf planet's surface, he's saved by Lani's quick thinking, even as she laments the foolishness of "Boys." Similarly shallow and ridiculous high jinks take up the remainder of the book. While the episodic plot and minimal science could be forgiven given the early-chapter-book audience, the fact that the future—and space—holds the same gender assumptions that plague the here and now is more than unfortunate. Here's hoping the next installment has the depth and creativity science fiction should deliver. (Science fiction. 6-9)

Kirkus Review