Help! Aliens Stole My Grandad is a zany story of family, loss, space pirates and an incredible adventure to Earth’s second moon (made of cheese of course). Harrison’s grandpa always wanted to go to space so when he passes away, Dad has an amazing idea. He attaches Grandpa’s ashes to a firework and sends it soaring. Harrison figures that’s it but when a bizarre band of alien pirates arrives at his window, he has a feeling this is just the beginning!
Help! Aliens Stole My Grandad is a swashbuckling, laugh-out-loud tale for readers age 7+.
I’m thrilled to welcome Hannah Moffatt to Scope for Imagination with a guest post!
Facts inspiring fiction
I have a confession. As much as I would love Earth to have a second hidden moon that’s really made of cheese … I made it up. But, while a world of cheese string trees and fondue rivers might not be secretly orbiting our planet, here are three factual (or at least close to factual) moments in the story.
- Snot in space is every bit as gross as I made it sound
When I was writing Help! Aliens Stole My Grandad I really enjoyed asking myself ‘what if?’ questions and then hopping onto Google (or calling my childhood best friend who, very conveniently, is an astrophysicist) to see what would actually happen.
One of those moments appears in the book when something as innocuous as a sneeze almost kicks off an intergalactic incident. And yes, my description in the book of snot separating into bubbles that drift without gravity pulling them away isn’t far from what would really happen. But that’s nothing compared to the horror of being the astronaut who sneezes inside their space helmet and can’t clear the snot away until they’re back on their spacecraft. (You can read a little more about that in the class activity pack on my website, which I’ve filled with comprehension questions, creative writing challenges and science facts based on each chapter.)
- Cows genuinely like music
One of Harrison’s toughest challenges in the story is attempting to milk the milkshake cows that charge over Cheddar Moon…and then learning to ride and control them through the power of some pretty terrible singing!
So far, there’s sadly been no evidence of cows charging over the moon. But there is evidence that cows on Earth like music. (There are some great video online of cows enjoying jazz, but I’m sure they’d like hearing Harrison sing Old MacDonald had a Farm just as much.)
- You don’t want to go anywhere near a black hole!
Early in the story the Cheddar Moon pirates give Harrison an ultimatum: find their lucky pink parrot (that they believe Harrison has scared away) by bedtime. Or walk the plank … into the black hole!
Walking the plank into a black hole is a seriously dangerous business. And while your guts probably wouldn’t be sucked through your eyeballs, as the alien pirates claim, your body would stretch out horribly in a process called spaghettification! So it seemed right that I should include one of the most terrifying regions in space in my story.
Help! Aliens Stole My Grandad, written by Hannah Moffatt and illustrated by Rory Walker is out with Everything With Words now.
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