Horn Book Review
Ten-year-old Astra and her family are moving to Nova Mundi, a planet so far away it takes 199 years to get there while frozen in a cryogenic state. Looking for a pre-voyage snack, Astra inadvertently directs one of the spaceship's robots to produce highly evolved, sentient cakes. With full-color cartoon-style illustrations, this is a wacky and hilarious adventure tale for hungry sci-fi fans. (c) Copyright 2015. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
The American debut of an acclaimed British comedy.Astra's family sets out on a 199-year journey to planet Nova Mundi. To survive the trip, the passengers will spend the voyage sleeping in a cryogenically frozen state. But before going nearly two centuries between dinner and breakfast, Astra wants a bedtime snack. The ship's food synthesizer's so much fun that she requests the ultimate cakewhich apparently breaks the machine, sticking it on a "WORKING" message. Astra dodges responsibility and goes to bed, only to wake up early as the only conscious human on the ship. She soon encounters the monstrous, sentient cakes the synthesizer has spent decades evolvingand worse, the synthesizer's malfunctions have put other essential ship functions at risk! While evading the hungry cakes on her quest to get to the ship's control room and set things to right, Astra encounters a terrifying-looking extraterrestrial life-form that's boarded the ship and is then caught by spoon-loving outer-space salvagers (who have mistaken the sleeping people for dead and declared the drifting ship abandoned). Astra must clean up her mess by stopping both the cakes and the aliens. Vibrant, lively illustrations highlight the ludicrousness of it all. The resolution's weird enough to fit in perfectly with the rest of the story.Campy, 1960s-style science fiction mixes with zany, kid-friendly ridiculousness for extreme fun. (Science fiction. 7-11) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
