Frank Cottrell Boyce is brilliant at seeing the world through children's eyes, he is such an imaginative writer!!! Absolutely one of my favourite authors I have ever read. Last night my 10 year old son and I were reading the adventures of Sputnik till it was nearly midnight (well it was Friday, so no school or work the following day). My children and I love Frank Cottrell Boyce's books, they are so sooo kind and compassionate, humorous and you also learn a rather surprising lot of information, like Saints in Millions, famous painters and their masterpieces in Framed, space staff in Cosmic, first animal orbiting the Earth in this book. It was a great idea to make Prez see Sputnik as someone else rather than just a dog. I liked the subtle reference Michael Morpurgo's book Escape From Shangri-La, where a girl helps her granddad escape from a nursing home called Shangri-La too. If children read that book, then it is nice for them to recognise the familiar reference, if they didn't read it, it is still stands strong on its own, I think. Anyway the book opens with a nice prologue that shows a list. That list is what happened during the summer and is the chapter title for each section. A successful juvenile by the beloved New Yorker writer portrays a farm episode with an imaginative twist that makes a poignant, humorous story of a pig, a spider and a little girl.

As Sputnik takes Prez on a journey to finish writing his guidebook to Earth called Ten Things Worth Doing on Earth, each adventure seems to take Prez nearer to the heart of the family he is being fostered by but they also take him closer to the day that he is due to leave them forever . . . He has also created a fantastic trilogy, writtenwith his trademark wit, warmth and sense of story, based upon Ian Fleming's novel, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, comprising Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Race Against Time and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Over the Moon. Being shortlisted for the Guardian Prize gives you a particularly warm glow because it is awarded by a panel of your fellow authors. Past winners include my childhood heroes - Alan Garner, Leon Garfield, Joan Aiken - and contemporary heroes like Mark Haddon, Geraldine McCaughrean and Meg Rosoff.”The three way chats, in which they are joined by other animals, about web spinning, themselves, other humans—are as often informative as amusing, and the whole tenor of appealing wit and pathos will make fine entertainment for reading aloud, too. Ok, to the plot: in brief, an alien from outer space has landed on earth and must find out ten good reasons to save the planet; otherwise it will be shrunk to the size of a little ball. This alien appears on the doorstep of a farm where a foster child, Prez (short for Preston), is spending the summer. Prez had been living with his grandfather until Granddad began to have memory issues. Granddad was sent off to an old folks home and Prez was put in "temporary care". When the alien, whom we soon learn is named "Sputnik", shows up, he appears to Prez as a funny-looking kid in a kilt, wearing goggles. He soon learns that Sputnik can hear his thoughts and that to other people, he looks like a dog. (The farm family is inordinately charmed by Sputnik's handshakes all around.) I don't want to say more, because we went in totally cold & were enthralled. Commute time, bedtime, waiting time, just plain sad time... Sputnik got us through a tough couple of months. It's been quite a while since our son asked for us to keep going on a read aloud with this kind of consistency. Another thing to say is that in the typical sort of YA easy children's book, one as a reader does not expect a lot of, if not, any, character development. This book has some quite good character development! I'm not going to lie: I went into this book with really low expectations. I don't know if that was because a) I was not impressed by the first Carnegie novel I read and b) I don't think the cover and title does the book justice! But in all honesty, I actually quite liked it and gave it three stars of five.

Frank is also a successful writer of film scripts and was the official scriptwriter for the Opening Ceremony for the 2012 Olympics, playing an important role devising the ceremony with Danny Boyle. He is also a judge for the BBC Radio 2 500 Words competition. You can read a great interview with Frank and one of his fellow judge, Francesca Simon here! Frank was asked by the Fleming Estate to write the official sequel to Ian Fleming's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again was shortlisted for the Roald Dahl Funny Prize in 2012. Shortlisted for the 2017 Carnegie Medal and selected for the Tom Fletcher Book Club, Sputnik's Guide to Life on Earth by Frank Cottrell-Boyce is an adventure about the Blythes: a big, warm, rambunctious family who live on a small farm and sometimes foster children. Now Prez has come to live with them. But, though he seems cheerful and helpful, he never says a word. So not all character development was that commendable but some of it really was so if you like character development in books, don't immediately cast this book aside because it has some! Sputnik Mellows, despite being an alien disguised in a dog in a YA book with a let-down of a cover, was an absolutely fantastic character! Really really liked him, definitely made the book worth reading - he was great! One thing for me that defines good character development is I have to care about them if they're going through stressful things. I don't want to give spoilers so I'll say that around three quarters of the way through the book, there is something that happens which has consequences towards him and I was genuinely sad, I wanted to just be with him the whole way through the book. He really boosted my enjoyment!In 2004, he wrote a book for children based on his own screenplay - Millions - and this book won the 2004 Carnegie Medal. It was published as a play in 2010. His second children's novel, Framed, was shortlisted for both the 2005 Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children's Book of the Year Award. This one was different. It is whimsical and silly and appealing without being excessively scatalogical in it's delivery. It is meaningful without being overly taxing. It's smart and a little odd in the way that Oliver Jeffers' picture books are smart and odd. And the ending is lovely, the whole reverse Big Bang of it all a great comfort without succumbing to habits of magical thought. The hard, real stuff is not reversed or anything. It's not erased from our fragile "remembrances." But it is tempered by a gentle inquisitiveness about the world we live in. Boyce is British, and not as well known in the U.S. as he should be. In the UK, he was chosen by Sir Ian Fleming’s heirs to write sequels to Fleming’s only children’s novel: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Boyce wrote a follow-up that outshined the original. He has written half a dozen original middle grade novels, including Millions, Framed, and Cosmic, each of which blend humor and heart in equal parts for poignant stories that brim with appealing characters and lots of hilarious hijinks. Sputnik’s Guide shares the winning formula of Boyce’s previous books.