Cosmic audiobook

Close your eyes. Lean back. Take a breath. Now think. Think about the books you read when you were a child. Think about the ones you loved. The ones you still think about sometimes. The ones that encouraged you to consider the world around you. Got them in your head? Great. Now just pluck out for me the ones that took place in outer space. Go on. I can wait. What’s that? You can’t think of any significant children’s books that took place in space? Would The Little Prince count? I guess so, but that’s not really the kind of space I mean. I’m talking about real space. The kind we blasted into in the 1960s and then never returned to. Where are the books about kids in space that have remained within the public consciousness? Fact of the matter is, there aren’t any. Oh, there are tons of books where kids go to space, sure. But how many of them are classics? How many of them are memorable? How many could you tell to the person on the street and get a spark of recognition in return? For now, none. But let me call you back in fifteen years and maybe your answer will be different. Because by then Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce should hopefully have found its readership. And if it has, we’re one step closer to having a space-based chapter book that everyone can enjoy. What happens when a twelve-year-old boy goes through such a growth spurt that he looks like he’s thirty? Well, in the case of Liam, inadvertent space travel. All right. Maybe not all that inadvertent. Liam’s a pretty good kid, but looking like a grown-up has gotten him into sticky situations. There was the time he was the only kid tall enough to ride the roller coaster, which in turn led to him getting free rides (and freaking out his dad). The time he almost got away with driving a car out of a dealership. And then there was the time he found himself on a rocket hurtling through space without knowing how to get it back. That sort of brings us up to speed because when the novel opens, that’s where Liam still is. He sort of won a contest for the world’s greatest dads and conned his classmate Florida into pretending to be his daughter. And then they sort of got flown to China where she was going to be one of the first kids to go to outer space. And then he kind of sort of won a competition to be the legal guardian that went along with the kids. Only now something has gone wrong and Liam’s finding that being the “sensible adult” is a lot harder when you want to scream and yell and run around like all the other kids freaking out around you. Instead, it’s up to him to get them safely home. Big job. Big kid. Consider one mister Frank Cottrell Boyce. Here we have a man who has written books like Millions and Framed. He’s sort of a one-namer writer. And his shtick, as I see it, is to write books that star boys, have high-concept ideas, are laugh-on-the-subway-and-get-strange-looks funny, and then also make you think about life, death, the universe, and everything in it. Millions paired boys finding two duffle bags full of money with questions about God and Jesus. Cosmic, for its part, pairs the story of a twelve-year-old who looks thirty with ample consideration of the eye of infinity and our place in the universe. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. This then is a book that’s amusing for all kids, but will make some of them consider the big picture as well. Now admittedly, I wasn’t hooked on Cosmic from the get go. The beginning was fun, but then Liam started to get into trouble and I was less amused by that. And about the time he was making a fool of himself in front of the real dads in China, I was positively embarrassed for him, and not sure I’d want to pick up the book again. But when Liam started competing with the other dads to become the one that went into space, I was hooked again. And after that the story just got more and more exciting. The multiple near death experiences didn't hurt either. After a while I realized that some of this book feels a bit like the movie Big. A kid gets a body of a grown man and suddenly the world is his oyster. The difference of course being that in Big the boy can go back to looking like a kid and in Cosmic Liam will just have to grow into his. It occurred to me after a while that adults reading this book would identify with it immediately. You find yourself in the body of a grown-up and everyone starts expecting you to act like a sensible human being with responsibilities? That’s my life every day! No wonder Liam eventually thinks to himself, “What’s the point in forfeiting your childhood if all you get for it is filling in forms?” So obviously grown-ups are going to relate to Liam, but would kids? Well, sure! Talk about the ultimate wish fulfillment. To live in the world and find yourself getting free rides at the amusement park, free car rides, and all the perks that go with the job . . . where’s the downside? Boyce shows the downside, but I don’t know how many kids will care. The fact that Liam’s a hoot to go along with (even when he’s being impossibly thick) was just a nice plus. After all, Boyce is a funny writer. He knows how to craft a good line. Example A: “I don’t think the world has vanished. But it is worrying not being able to see it. After all, Earth is where I keep all my stuff.” When Liam’s dad tells him to get a friend who’s not an online companion his argument is, “You need a friend who is visible to the naked eye.” And Boyce is the master of funny (and always pertinent) chapter headings like “The Ice-Cream Man of the Gobi Desert”. It’s also just a great book about dads and how important they are. Adults reading will understand pretty early on that Florida’s supposedly perfect father that she's always comparing Liam to is just a figment of her imagination. In fact, fathers are sort of the most consistent theme of the book. Early on Liam comes to the conclusion that his dad only speaks on five separate topics of conversation. Then, when he finds himself a kind of pseudo-father, he steals his dad’s book on how to talk to teens, and finds himself in the old man’s shoes. Finally, even when he’s in the most trouble, Liam can’t help but think that his dad may still find him, even in the farthest reaches of space. It’s this childlike faith that keeps reminding you that for all his posturing, Liam’s really just a kid like the rest of them. And when Liam acts like a kid, it always makes sense. He doesn’t do it randomly. He just reacts to situations like a child would want to and the result is sometimes funny, sometimes disastrous. Which in turn makes his sacrifice at the end all the more impressive.Some may feel that the book is too doggone English to appeal to American kids. I don’t. The Britishisms aren’t a problem, though I did have to look up what a satnav was. Ditto haribo. Not that they aren’t easy to look up, but you may scratch your head a little when you run across them. Still, kids today have grown up on a steady diet of Harry Potter. In nine out of ten occasions they’ll be able to parse what it means when Liam says of chips, “the moment they make contact with your tongue they stop being crisps and become soggies.” Honestly I worry more about the celebrity gossip repeated by Florida. I’d like this book to age gracefully, but its technological references and mentions that Tom Cruise’s teeth are completely false may make it difficult to peruse thirty years from now. Interestingly, the book I pair this one with in my head is actually Moonshot by Brian Floca. Now, granted, Moonshot is a picture book and Cosmic is a wordy bit of fluffy genius, but the two share one significant thing in common. They have a good solid appreciation of that feeling of awe and fear we have sometimes when we gaze up at the moon. When Floca writes, “They go rushing into darkness, flying toward the Moon, far away, cold and quiet, no air, no life, but glowing in the sky,” how different is it from Boyce when he says, “The surface is white as paper and the shadows are sharp and definite” and later “The stars were getting just a bit dimmer. Like someone was drawing a curtain over them. But I knew what was behind the curtain now. Behind the curtain was everything, and I was nothing.” In both cases, the authors are dealing with a feeling that writers for centuries have grappled to put to paper: wonder. Wonder and awe. These are books that look into the blackness that surrounds the earth and presses upon us from all sides, and makes it manageable and comprehensible to young minds. They acknowledge the fear and they counter it with beauty. Fifteen years from now, I like to think, I’ll meet you again. And I’ll tell you to close your eyes. I’ll tell you to lean back. I’ll tell you to take a breath and to think. Think about a book about kids in space that is memorable, classic, and in the pubic consciousness. And maybe, just maybe, your eyes will flutter open and you’ll shoot me a pitying look of mild disgust as you say sarcastically, “Uh, like ‘Cosmic’? Hello?” That’s what I’m shooting for right now. Because as novels for kids go, Boyce has managed to write one that’s just the right mixture of fun and philosophy. Kids will love it and grown-ups will love to read it with them. Doesn’t matter how tall or short you are, because Cosmic is for you.Ages 9-12.

I read this with my 10 year old son for his book club run through a local independent book store, and we really enjoyed it! It is a genuinely humorous and well-written middle grade book. No surprise as the club facilitator is an absolute book genius when it comes to kids and YA titles.I don't know whether to be surprised or not to find that none of the other parents read the book. Am I unusual for reading the books my kids are reading? Genuine question. I just like to enjoy the books with them and talk to them about what they read.

Here's my blog post:A few years ago I fell hard for Millions, Frank Cotrell Boyce’s first book for children. The outlandish situation (two boys feverishly spending large amounts of money), the characterizations (particularly of the two boys and their father), the subtle handling of the big emotional and theological themes (of grief and faith), the laugh-out-loud humorous moments (my favorite being the playground economy), and the remarkable voice of narrator Damian (the younger of the two boys) made it a memorable novel for me as well as for my students when I read it aloud to them. Boyce’s next novel, Framed, did not win me over the same way. Fortunately, he has gone one better with his newest book, Cosmic.*“I’m not exactly in the Lake District.”Indeed he is not. He’s not even on Earth. With that small, understated sentence Boyce hooks us up with his twelve-year old narrator, Liam, a “great lad.” Great as in being really tall; tall enough to ride any amusement park ride he wishes, tall enough to drive, tall enough to be repeatedly mistaken as an adult. Say on his first day at a new secondary school as a “gifted and talented” student when he is initially identified as a teacher. Great as in being really, really good at the multiplayer online role-playing game, World of Warcraft. Great as being really smart and really brave. Great as in having a sweet and thoughtful and sensitive way that stands him in good stead when he ends up in a rocket coming back from the moon.With a bunch of kids.Who think he is a dad.Boyce gets Liam’s voice just right. A screenwriter, he knows how to set-up scenes, create engaging dialog, and make a completely improbable situation believable. As he did with Millions, Boyce brings in deep philosophical ideas in a kid-friendly, convincing, and moving way. With this one it is about dads, about what it is to be one, what it is to be an adult. To the book’s readers, Liam is convincingly a kid throughout his story, even as he convinces the adults he encounters that he is an adult. And not just any adult — an adult just like his dad.A completely lovely book; highly recommended.* The book will be published in the US in July, but is already available at audible; thanks to Kelly Herold who alerted me to this fact.

I've had this ARC sitting on my shelf for a few months now, and if I'd known how much fun it would be and how much I'd like it, I would have read it as soon as I got it. But it's a new author for me, and the blurb didn't make it sound all that interesting. Since this North American edition is due out early next year, I thought I should probably get reading. And it turned out to be just what I needed: a funny, laugh-out-loud, wistful and rollicking ride that reminded me at times of Roald Dahl (more on that later).Liam is only twelve, but his growth spurt hit early. Now taller than most adults and sporting a new batch of stubble, he's mistaken for the new teacher on his first day of grade 7 at a new school. That lasted only so long as it took him to try to incite a walk-out, but it's only the first time he's mistaken as an adult. Since he looks about thirty, Liam and his classmate Florida have great fun doing things that kids can only do with adult supervision - until his dad, a taxi driver, catches him about to test drive a Porsche. All that practice at pretending to be Florida's dad comes in very handy when he wins a competition to be among the first people to visit a new, state-of-the-art space-themed theme park in China. Faking a letter to his parents about his class going to the Lake District for a school trip is easy enough. The only problem is, he needs someone to be his child, to take along with him, because the competition is for a parent and child. Convincing celebrity-gossip-obsessed Florida is only part of the problem: when they arrive their host, Dr Drax, tells them that it is the four children who will be going into space. Their fathers will be staying behind. To come so close and not realise his dream! He manages to convince Dr Drax that the children should have an adult present, but Dr Drax decides to let the children vote on which Dad they want with them by voting on them after a series of challenges. Problem is, why would the kids want a computer-game obsessed "dad" with them when they know he'll hog the controls? Frank Cottrell Boyce is better known as the author of Millions, which was made into a movie. I haven't seen it, or read the book. Other reviewers have said it's a better book than Cosmic - considering how much I enjoyed this, perhaps I should read Millions too. Cosmic is an utterly delightful read - and I've been waiting for ages to say that about a book! Liam is a funny, engaging narrator, a mix of precocious child and wise adult who is obsessed with the Waterloos of the world and a role-playing computer game called World of Warcraft (which comes in very handy for navigating his way through encounters with grumpy adults). He carries the novel easily. When you remember how much practice Liam has at pretending to be an adult, and of having adults who know he's a kid always expecting him to behave better, "big lad like you", it's not all that surprising. Sure, sometimes his voice was a little too mature, but it also has that naïve youthfulness that you leave behind before you hit 20. Usually.The humour renders the implausibility of the plot unimportant, in that Hitchhiker's way. This is one of the first books I've read in ages that made me laugh out loud. It was a breath of fresh air, lightening my week, and some of the irreverence transferred to my own life - there's nothing better than the ability to laugh at the absurdities of our own lives.The story is told by Liam from space, and is the story of how he got there. I haven't been so entertained in ages. It really is a silly story, and yet poignant at times too - it's no shallow, brittle kind of humour, but earnest, which also makes it just that little bit sad. There's also this pervading sense of ... something, possibly bad, because all through the book you know that these five children are stuck in space, orbiting the moon, completely cut off from Earth and home and their parents. It certainly did prove how bad an idea it was of Dr Drax's to send just children into space - they messed up their task because they were fighting over who got to press the green button.This is a great book for all ages - as an adult I enjoyed it immensely. It reminded me of Roald Dahl not just because of the humour but because the five fathers and five kids winning a competition to visit some exciting new place and do challenges is highly reminiscent of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This is the first North American edition and I do wish they'd left the spelling alone. It's very jarring to leave the British vocabulary but not the spelling, and seriously, when you hear or picture British people talking, they do leave the "U"s in!

This book is what happens when you take a Roald-Dahl-style premise and give it a heart. It's warm, humorous, and told in a fantastically convincing middle grade voice. In an unusual turn for a middle grade novel, it's also a reflection on fatherhood, and as our young protagonist attempts to be "dadly," (why? long story) readers are reminded of how awesome dads really are.

This book follows the story of a 12-year-old boy, Liam, who is often mistaken for an adult due to his height and facial hair. In the beginning, there is some explanation of the adventures this has led to (and the often disastrous outcomes), as he dwells on the time he had taken a Porsche on a test drive with his ‘daughter’ Florida (who is actually a friend from school). The majority of the book, however, is dedicated to their time in space, orbiting the moon in a shuttle that closely resembles an ice-cream bus. ‘Mum, Dad – if you’re listening – you know I said I was going to the South Lakeland Outdoor Activity Centre with the school? To be completely honest, I’m not exactly in the Lake District. To be completely honest, I’m more sort of… in space. I’m on this rocket, the Infinite Possibility. I’m about two hundred thousand miles above the surface of the Earth.’An incredible hook to an incredible story! Not just about space but about friendships, families, relationships and lies.The story is told from the perspective of Liam, describing what has happened to them in a reflective tone. He records his story on his mobile phone using the voice recorder ‘app’, and as a result this book can be read aloud beautifully. As this is mostly Liam’s reflection of the events that led him to be in charge of a space shuttle, there is a bit of jumping between ‘present-day Liam’ talking about his view of the Earth, and the Liam of the past, in the months leading up to the adventure. That definitely helped to keep engagement with the story – I often found myself wanting to skip forward a bit to find out how they arrived on a spaceship spiralling out of control. These jumps between past and the present day weren’t too difficult to follow and definitely made the book more engaging.

Naar de maan is een super schattig boek over de twaalfjarige Liam die met zijn lengte iedereen voor de gek houdt. Hij is zo groot, dat mensen denken dat hij een volwassene is. En zo belandt hij aan boord van een ruimteschip. De schrijfstijl is heel grappig en het verhaal vertederend. Echt een leuk kinderboek!Een uitgebreide recensie volgt.

A hilarious story about a young boy who finally feels at home in himself and his unusual size. Cosmic illustrates the extreme consequences of lying as well as the immense power that comes with responsibility and friendship.

16 June 2010 COSMIC by Frank Cottrell Boyce, HarperCollins/Walden Pond Press, January 2010, 320p., ISBN: 978-0-06-183683-1; Libr. ISBN: 978-0-06-183686-2"Floating free as a birdSixty foot leaps it's so absurdFrom up here you should see the viewSuch a lot of space for me and you"-- Ray Thomas "So I turned the key in the ignition. The car made a sound like a cat purring. The man stepped aside and pointed to the bonnet. 'Engineering perfection.' He smiled."It is at the moment, I thought. But in five minutes' time it might well be a load of scrap metal. The thing about Level Two of course is that it has new and unexpected dangers. So you stand a much better chance of being killed. "I looked down at the pedals. I knew one of them was the accelerator. I just wasn't sure which one. One lesson the World of Warcraft teaches you is that if you want to succeed on the next level, you need to acquire new skills. Don't level up until you've skilled up. Sadly this was a lesson I'd forgotten. I was pretty sure though that the accelerator was the one in the middle. I had my foot on it when the door on the passenger side opened and a very familiar voice said, 'You. Out. Now. Come on.'" Dad to the rescue. There are a number of elements that Frank Cottrell Boyce deftly combines to make COSMIC one of the funniest books I've read this year: He takes the concept of privatized space tourism to the next level.He repeatedly employs mistaken identity to set up zany, improbable situations. He satirizes parenting styles. He plays on the notion that World of Warcraft (the multiplayer online role-playing game with millions of subscribers) is the place young people best learn about problem solving and the real world. And he repeatedly sets up the punch line: "'But...well, you should have more sense, a big lad like you.'" Twelve year-old Liam is, indeed a big lad -- and one who has now begun to shave. But he is still a twelve year-old and, in a manner reminiscent of Josh Baskin (Tom Hanks' character in the movie Big), we repeatedly experience Liam's being thrust into the role of an adult who frequently has more of a child-like spirit than any of the "normal" kids around him."To be completely honest, I'm not exactly in the Lake District."To be completely honest, I'm more sort of in space." COSMIC is the story of how Liam finds himself masquerading as an adult and a father and leading a quartet of his peers -- including his own friend/pretend daughter, Florida Kirby -- into space on a privately organized (and secret) mission. The whole thing might sound more than a little improbable, but this flight is being taken on a spaceship called the Infinite Possibility owned by a theme park magnate, and Liam has seriously leveled up for what is to come by studying his father's copy of TALK TO YOUR TEEN:"The worst thing you can do with teens is get sucked into an argument on their terms. They have more time than you do. They can keep going forever.""Here I am floating round my tin can, far above the MoonPlanet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do"-- David Bowie Unfortunately, after launch, a simple maintenance procedure goes terribly awry, knocking their vessel out of orbit and destroying their communications links, so that Liam finds himself in charge of a quartet of his peers in a doomed spaceship. COSMIC is the result of his journaling the seemingly ill-fated journey. A few aspects of COSMIC that will really stay with me are the contrasting styles of parenting that are lampooned through our getting to know about the fathers of Liam's four charges, and the degree to which the author is able to convey a sense of wonder and awe about space travel. (I am quite curious about the process by which the fourth man to step on the moon came to make a cameo appearance in this book.) I am also now quite interested in standing over someone's shoulder and watching him or her engage in Worlds of Warcraft. "When I got near to Florida she spread out her arms and grinned at me. I couldn't figure out what she was doing but then she hissed, 'Photo. Take photos. With your phone. It's what dad's do.'"'My dad doesn't.'"'Well, mine does. He's like my own personal paparazzi.'"'Paparazzo. Paparazzi is when there's more than one.'"'And he doesn't correct everything I say either.'' And the humor. It is an absolute total crack-up of a story. There is no reason younger students cannot thoroughly enjoy it, but COSMIC is a must-read for middle schoolers.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! Funny, adventurous and educational. Might have to read this one whole-class.

This story is truly cosmic. Cottrell really has a great sense of humor and writes in a way that made me laugh out loud. The main character Liam is easy to relate to, even if you're not a 12 year old bearded boy. Even though it is not likely that a middle school boy can pose as an adult and get launched into space on a crazy mission, I was so absorbed in the story that I believed it could happen!

I loved the storytelling and the humour, but most of all I loved the space scenes and the description of that experience of seeing the world from far far above. I think it nails what that must feel like emotionally.

Extra star for the narration. I looked forward to driving places so I could listen to this in the car. Great main character and original plot.