Freak Street: Alienson's Time Machine

Knife & Packer (authors)

Scholastic, Australia: June 2010; 93pp

ISBN: 9781741695366 

Genres: adventure, graphic novel, humour

Beware: this book contains, 'An alien wearing giant underpants on his head, dancing the hokey-pokey', amongst other weird and wonderful things.

When the Alienson's buy a short-jump time machine from their home planet, Valvax-7, they expect it to help them find lost keys, where they left a pair of socks and other such things. Instead an essential lever breaks off and the family is trapped in the future – a future where robots rule the world and aliens (and the humans and zombies with whom they normally share their street) are illegal. How are the Aliensons to survive? And is it truly possible that Arlene's horrendous singing might be good enough to win Galaxy Idol 3011 and save the day?

Knife & Packer have a wonderfully warped sense of humour and together they have produced a delightfully wacky series that combines graphic novel and chapter book. Brightly coloured, cartoon-style illustrations will appeal to visual readers and those making the bridge between picture books and novels. The slightly satirical edge will attract brighter children but the narrative is sufficiently straightforward and benign to make it readable by very young gifted readers.

Good fun and sure to appeal to readers of Pilot & Huxley.