Spacekid iLk: Invasion 101 by Andrew Hammond

Hammond’s hilarious story and illustrations will relate to both children and adults. iLK is growing up on his parent’s spaceship travelling from planet to planet. All he wants to do is care for his plants and survive his youth. All his parents want is for him to grow up and learn responsibility. His father and iLK share a lot of qualities that iLK is too young to accept, but as his mother says, “Like father, like son.”

His father has been assigned a task on Earth, and it is a task that he does not want to do, so he (really iLK’s mother) decides to put iLK in charge of Earth and determine if it should be destroyed. While on Earth, iLK learns that maybe responsibility and growing up isn’t such a bad thing after all, and that there is a lot of good on Earth. Unfortunately, his father does not want to hear these things.

Spacekid iLK is the first book in a series, and I cannot wait to read the others when they are published. There are a lot of great characters in this graphic novel, but my favorite has to be the Y-bot. It is a robot that follows iLK around on the spaceship asking “why” to everything. I also especially love the moments of understanding between father and son, and mother and son, that help guide iLK to understanding that somethings are worth fighting for, even if that means standing alone.