THE PRINCESS OF NEPTUNE

With a strong nod to Daniel Pinkwater, this feather-light sci-fi comedy features a high-school girl kidnapped by aliens for an intergalactic beauty contest on Neptune. Everyone in the story has an odd name, including the heroine, Theora Theremin, who makes a bad start on a science project and becomes embroiled in a fight against Mr. Pinweed, her extremely weird science teacher. Along the way, she befriends the Beast of the Mall, Claude, a large fern from the Crab Nebula who turns out to be Mr. Pinweed’s brother, Hortense Benway, a giant singing cockroach from the Moon, which celestial body actually is called “Bob” by its inhabitants, and, well, you get the picture. Dodd plays for nothing but laughs, and often gets them with a story that should appeal to plenty of young readers. (Fiction. 10-14)