Mars Evacuees - Hardcover

McDougall, Sophia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0062293990 ISBN 13: 9780062293992

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2015

Synopsis

From bestselling UK author Sophia McDougall comes one fresh and funny adventure-filled tween debut about a group of kids evacuated to Mars! Perfect for fans of Artemis Fowl, this laugh-out-loud series is packed with nonstop fun.

When Earth comes under attack by aliens, hilarious heroine Alice Dare and a select group of kids are sent to Mars. But things get very strange when the adults disappear into thin air, the kids face down an alien named Thsaaa, and Alice and her friends must save the galaxy!

For when plucky twelve-year-old Alice Dare learns she's being taken out of the Muckling Abbott School for Girls and sent to another planet, no one knows what to expect. This is one wild ride that will have kids chuckling the whole way through.

About this title

About the Author

Sophia McDougall studied English literature at Oxford and is the author of plays, poetry, and the Romanitas trilogy (Romanitas, Rome Burning, and Savage City). She lives in London.

From the Back Cover

The fact that someone had decided that I would be safer on Mars, where you could still only sort of breathe the air, and sort of not get sunburned to death, was a sign that the war with the aliens was not going fantastically well.

I was worried that I was about to be told that my mother's spacefighter had been shot down, so when I found out that I was being evacuated to Mars, I was pretty calm.

And, despite everything that happened to me and my friends afterward, I'd do it all again. Because until you have been chased by invisible aliens, befriended a robot goldfish, and tried to save the galaxy, I don't think you can say that you've really lived.

If the same thing happens to you, here's my advice: always carry duct tape.

Reviews

Gr 5–7—Alice Dare's mother is a pilot, fighting the Morrors in space, and her father works on a submarine, laying mines. Just 15 years in the future, the world is slowly freezing-making it more comfortable for the invading Morrors, but worse for humankind. Sooner than expected, Alice is evacuated to Mars, and enrolled as a cadet in the Exo-Defense Force, under the watchful eyes of a variety of robots and in the blustery command of Colonel Dirk Cleaver, who is determined to whip the children into a fearsome fighting force. Mars has undergone intensive terraforming and now sports a somewhat breathable atmosphere and the beginnings of plant life, along with a low gravity bounciness that's hard to resist. With new friends Carl and Josephine, Alice participates in drills, has some fun, and steps into a leadership role when the adults on the base disappear. Determined to get help, Alice, Josephine, and Carl steal a Flying Fox and cross paths with a Morror their own age. These young friends help the adults see that the real threat is not from one another, and the story wraps up with hope that humans and Morrors can coexist. This book has plenty of action, with middle school humor and an occasional, but mild, swear thrown in during times of stress. Suggest to fans of Margaret Peterson Haddix's "The Missing" series (S. & S.) and Emma Clayton's The Roar (Scholastic, 2009).—Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0062293990
• ISBN 13: 9780062293992
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 416