Akiko and the Journey to Toog

Akiko to the rescue again! On her way home from school one day, the intrepid fifth grader is picked up in a space ship masquerading as a police car by her alien friends Mr. Beeba, Spuckler, and Gax. Quickly they explain: their friend Poog was recently called back to his planet, Toog, which apparently is in grave danger. But Poog hasn’t returned, and his buddies are concerned. So off they all go, in spite of Akiko’s misgivings: "We were heading to a planet none of us had ever been to before--a place where we were apparently not the least bit welcome--to deal with some sort of terrible threat that we knew absolutely nothing about. It sounded like an excellent recipe for total disaster." But Akiko has faced danger before, and has always made it through in one piece (Akiko and the Intergalactic Zoo , Akiko on the Planet Smoo , etc.). Surely she can save little purple Poog and make it home in time to relieve her replacement robot on Earth before another school day… Mark Crilley’s Japanese anime-inspired Akiko series offers plenty of intergalactic adventure and a spunky, likable heroine who is surprisingly down-to-earth for being so often in outer space. (Ages 8 to 12) --Emilie Coulter