The Challengers

Galaxy Games:

The Challengers


Book Info

  • Title: Galaxy Games: The Challengers
  • ISBN: 978-60060-660-1
  • Author: Greg R. Fishbone
  • Illustrator: Ethen Beavers
  • Release Date: September 2011
  • Publisher: Tu Books / Lee & Low Books
  • Ages: 9-12

Synopsis

Things are looking up for Tyler Sato (literally!) as he and his friends scan the night sky for a star named for him by his Tokyo cousins in honor of his eleventh birthday. Ordinary stars tend to stay in one place, but Ty’s seems to be streaking directly toward Earth at an alarming rate. Soon the whole world is talking about TY SATO, the doomsday asteroid, and life is turned upside down for Ty Sato, the boy, who would rather be playing hoops in his best friend’s driveway.

Meanwhile, aboard a silver spaceship heading for Earth, M’Frozza, a girl with three eyes and five nose holes, is on a secret mission. M’Frozza is the captain of planet Mrendaria’s Galaxy Games team, and she is desperate to save her world from a dishonorable performance in the biggest sporting event in the universe.

What will happen when Ty meets M’Frozza? Get ready for the most important event in human history—it’s off the backboard, around the rim, and out of this world!

Reviews

Fishbone fulfills every alien-obsessed kid’s dream with this first book in the Galaxy Games series, about a pressure-filled cosmic challenge between 11-year-old Tyler Sato and M’Frozza, a cheerful squidlike Mrendarian. Complemented by Beavers’s comic book–style artwork, Fishbone’s narrative is ripe with kid-friendly humor and many of the plot twists could be straight from the “what if” imaginings of a fourth-grade classroom. Though Fishbone clearly sets up the next book, he gives Tyler enough of a victory to leave readers satisfied.

Publishers Weekly

Galaxy Games: The Challengers was such a fun read. I had a great time taking turns between laughing and sitting on the edge of my seat. I loved it.

James Dashner, author of The Maze Runner

Grab your navigation beacons and prepare for the gaming arena! With a motley cast of likable yet unlikely heroes, Greg R. Fishbone’s Galaxy Games is laugh-out-loud funny, an intergalactic adventure sure to tickle your cartilage encasement.

Mark Peter Hughes, author of A Crack in the Sky

What I really liked was the way he incorporated diversity in his book. In most books it’s white people meets a space alien and blah blah. This book, however, incorporated all different sorts of cultures and even I learned something from this book. It incorporated Japanese culture, Japanese-American culture among other cultures. It truly embodies the fact that it is earth meeting the space aliens.

I would recommend this to a middle grade student or to anyone who likes sci-fi.

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