Title: I Spent My Summer Vacation Kidnapped into Space
Author: Martyn N. Godfrey
Date: 1990
Publisher: Scholastic
ISBN: 0-590-43418-7
Length: 133 pages
Quote: "We should have gone to the end-of-school party with the rest of the class. Instead, we headed for the asteroids."
Not only but mostly in the fears of parents, Mr. Stranger Danger is everywhere, embodied in as many different forms as Santa Claus, always looking for ways to kidnap children for horrid purposes instead of giving them prezzies. In this science-fiction whimsy, two sixth grade graduates, Jared and Reeann, have to fight fifteen-foot slime worms in a Roman-style circus, then rescue the princess of an alien empire from her wicked uncle.
I couldn't suspend disbelief for five seconds and doubt middle school readers can either, but maybe they're not meant to do that. Going by the author's brief foreword, this may be a parody an actual middle school class helped Godfrey make up. Come to think, it does remind me of some of the less inspired stories my brother and I used to act out, where running about and shouting silly parodic battlecries was the point; nobody was in danger, any fictive danger in the story would be resolved preferably by a ridiculous accident, if we'd made up a baddie too tough for a character to beat in a fair fight we could always make up an underground wasps' nest for the baddie to stomp into...
If you are a middle school student and want to enact silly chases and fights, just to burn off surplus energy after school or at recess, I Spent My Summer Vacation Kidnapped into Space may inspire you.
Priscilla, thanks for your inquiry about reviewing my latest book. At the moment, it isnt available to the public. I plan to make it so, but havent gotten around to it yet. But thanks for your interest.
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