SUZIE SAVES THE UNIVERSE: Blast into 2022 with this funny, illustrated, STEM-themed adventure series, perfect for kids aged 6-9

This is a STEM themed adventure book, yes I had to look it up as well, it stands for Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths, and basically means reading these types of books will give the child an introduction into these subjects.My 5 year old granddaughter is just about ready to have here reading vocabulary and interests broadened, and this might just be the type of book to do it.The book is a large soft back book with 224 pages of well spaced out text and black and white pictures and diagrams, every easy to read alone or with help to follow along.The book follows the adventures of Suzie Wen, who loves inventing gadgets and things, but not everything turns out the way she expects it to happen. Suzie invents the Super 3DTV and she ends up getting transported into her favourite TV show, Space Blasters! While on a space ship, moons start disappearing, it’s up to Suzie to save the universe with her inventing skills, but will she ever get home?An engaging book, that may or may not spark something within a child to start inventing things themselves, I know my granddaughter is enjoying it and she would recommend.This is book one of two.

Science fiction for younger readers. Ideal age would be six to nine. It might be a tiny bit juvenile for anyone older.It is the start of a series. But the story is complete and self contained, just leaving the door open for more adventures at the end.It runs two hundred and four pages. It has fifteen chapters. There are illustrations. Which can be full page of smaller.This is the story, narrated in the first person, of Suzie Wen. A smart girl who likes making things. Who is feeling a bit adrift as a friend has moved away and her siblings are getting into teenage stuff.First person narration does mean she rambles a little in the first chapter, which is all about dumplings. But then it gets moving after that. When her attempt at making 3D tv leaves her literally in the adventures of Space Blasters. Her favourite tv show. Starring dashing hero Spaceman Jack. Practical pilot Captain Jane. And alien tech guy five eyed Frank.Attempts to get her home are put on hold when they discover a threat to the universe.This is nice easy reading. Large print always helps for that. And the illustrations do help get you into things. It does allow Suzie to grow and develop as a character nicely along the way. Her desire to think her way through problems is appealing. And thus the resulting life lessons feel organic not forced. It does have a pretty decent main plot also, which rather creeps up on you without you noticing, and It does go not quite where you might expect.The supporting cast are decent. Jane is an appealingly reliable character. Frank learns life lessons in a good way also. And Jack is like a slightly toned down version of Zapp Brannigan from Futurama. So he's a bit vain but likeable as a person with it.Ultimately quite an affable read, so for kids who like to think and have a bit of imagination, this should be ideal. There is another book in the series coming shortly. See the back of this for more on that.

Suzie Wen loves inventing things almost as much as she loves the dumplings that her grandma (po-po) makes for her and Susie’s grandad (gung-gung). Suzie has lots of great ideas, tonnes of enthusiasm and is constantly thinking of ways of making machines to bring them to life.However, things have been tough for Suzie recently. Her grandparents moved to the coast a couple of years ago, which means that she doesn’t see them as much as she wants to while at the start of the summer holidays Suzie’s best friend Bonnie moved away with her family to live in New York City. Suzie doesn’t have any other friends and her older brother (13-year-old David) is more interested in playing his drums in the garage while her older sister (15-year-old Lizzie) is always out with her friends and both her parents are always too busy working to spend much time with her.Still, Suzie has her ideas notebook and can watch episodes of her favourite TV show - Space Blasters - about a trio of explorers (Spaceman Jack, Captain Jane and Five-Eyed Frank) who go around saving the universe on their spaceship called TUBS (which stands for The Universe’s Best Spacecraft). That’s when she gets her best idea ever - she should make something that gives her a 3D experience of being on Space Blasters! But when Suzie turns on her Super 3-D TV Gizmo something goes wrong and Suzie finds herself actually on board TUBS with the actual Space Blasters!As Suzie, Captain Jane, Spaceman Jack and a very suspicious Five-Eyed Frank try to work out just how she’s managed to get herself into their world, the Space Blasters find themselves with a new mission: planetary moons are disappearing from orbit, leaving inhabitants locked in a deep sleep. Only the Space Blasters and Suzie can get to the bottom of what’s going on and save the universe again!Katie and Kevin Tsang’s SF adventure for readers aged 6+ (the first in a series) has a lot of set-up, which distorts the pacing, and hand waves over how Suzie has found herself in a TV show that’s actually real. That said there is a lot of humour, it conveys how cool science and inventions are (provides bonus facts for readers), Amy Nguyen’s illustrations are lively and fun and there’s a lot of potential for future books, which I would check out.Because this is the first book in a series, there is necessarily a lot of set up here, which Katie and Kevin Tsang (Katie Tsang perhaps being better known for her children’s books written as Katherine Webber) spend time doing in the first couple of chapters. I totally understand why this is necessary and the fact that the book is told to the reader by Suzie in the first person makes it easier to follow along, but I was waiting for the main action to start. That said, the reader gets the background as to Suzie’s loneliness and feelings of isolation while also understanding that she is clearly very clever and talented with a lot of enthusiasm for engineering new inventions (and in a world where we need more girls to understand that science and mathematics are for people like them I am all for books like this).For all this though, there is no explanation for how Suzie’s invention has managed to plunge her into the actual TV show, or indeed, why Spaceman Jack, Captain Jane and Five-Eyed Frank are apparently real people having real adventures rather than actors playing characters in a TV show. Instead the Tsangs essentially hand wave over it, presumably as it is something that will be picked up in later books, but I was a bit disappointed that Suzie doesn’t pick up on it given that she expressly states at the beginning of the book that she knows Space Blasters is a TV show and not real. It may be that this is not something that would bother a lot of young readers, but I know that having once been a young reader myself, this is absolutely the first thing I would have wanted to know.Once the action moves onto TUBS, the pace picks up. Five-Eyed Frank is, in my opinion, going to be the MVP in this series. I enjoyed the quirks about his diet and his suspicions about Suzie and why she’s really there. By turns smart and childish, the Tsangs show how he feels threatened by Suzie’s arrival and although the resolution to this is a bit too quick for my liking, is still well done. Unfortunately in contrast, Spaceman Jack and Captain Jane are fairly bland, stock characters at this stage in the book and essentially seem to be there to provide exposition and background. That said, given that this is a series it would not surprise me if they each develop more as the books go on.The plot itself revolves around moons disappearing from planets. It’s neatly done, I enjoyed the alien worlds that the Tsangs create (and really, who could resist a babbit?) while Nguyen’s black and white illustrations really help to bring them to life (her pictures of the tangles probably being my favourite as they view the Space Blasters with narrow-eyed suspicion). There are common themes here of loneliness, friendship and the importance of kindness and although that does tie in with Suzie’s feelings of isolation and loneliness, I wish a bit more had been made of it in the book to bring that message home.One really neat thing about this book is the fact that there are little boxes peppered throughout it that give genuine science facts, which I thought was a neat way of getting younger children interested in science while also linking it to things discussed in the story.All in all, although I don’t think this book is currently firing on all thrusters (yes that pun is intended and no, I will not apologise for it), there is a lot of potential here for future books and I look forward to seeing where Suzie and the Space Blasters go next.

In the words of our 7yr old, who has been reading this book at bedtime for the last week or so…“The main character is Suzie Wen and she likes inventing stuff.Her favourite thing in the world is Dumplings! She tried to make an automatic dumpling maker, but it went wrong.Then she tried to make a 3D Headset and that went badly wrong. Everything went black.When she woke up she saw an Alien named Five Eyed Frank, who was in Space Blasters crew.Then they do some tests to confirm she is human. She passes, and explained how she got there.Apparently Earth is in a whole different universe, and she some how beamed herself there!They show her round the spaceship ’Tubs’ and then they go outside because the ship is heading toward a planet that stinks of cheeseThe ship crash lands and they fall down a holeThe other crew mates are Captain Jane and Spaceman JackJack comes down the hole on a rope to Suzie with a torch. In the light they discover blue bunnies! Jack scans them with his space suit and they are apparently called BabbidsSpaceman Jack goes back up, but Suzie asks the babbids to bounce her back up Planet CheddarThe planet is out of orbit, with the moon missing!They visit planet Topsy Turvy to try and find out more.. which has Floptopus creatures!”… carry on to find out moreNice pictures.

I hear this is a great read; I had a flick through myself and do think it’s well-written in a relatable voice, comedic with a punchy, animated style that’s easy to get into and tremendously entertaining for children especially with the mind-bending adventure story.It’s a good length book (206 pages) with clearly printed large text, very appropriate for the 6-9 ages range. The book is illustrated in black and white in a modern style that suits the style of the story; I do however think some of the illustrations have been printed much too dark and it’s difficult to make out the different tones of black and grey, with some of the detail being lost altogether - hopefully something that can be addressed for future print runs...Can’t fault the story itself or the quality of the writing, very good.