The AstroNaughties: Moon Mayhem; Andrew Cranna

Welcome to Astro Academy, a school for the best of the best, and also home to the Astronaughties, whose parents are up on the moon building the first ever theme park in space. It’s exciting times at the Astro Academy as the Cosmo kids - a quartet of highly trained young astronauts - are going to be the first children to go into space and will be exploring Lunar Park. Or at least that was the plan…

After accidentally launching the rocket that was meant to take the Comso kids to the moon, the Astronaughties find themselves hurtling through space. All excited thoughts of seeing their parents quickly dissolve upon landing though as mums and dads are nowhere to be found. What they do discover is a crashed UFO, a trapped alien and an unhinged Moon General with some dastardly plans of his own. The fate of Lunar Park and its adult builders depends on three naughty children, an Octopug and a robot. Can the Astronaughties save the day…

Presented as a black and white graphic novel, Moon Mayhem is the first in a series of lunar adventures that is chaotic, zany and silly on a galactic scale. The wild ride and act now, think later antics of the Astronaughties are sure to have children chuckling across the cosmos.

Told by Butbot (whose name has nothing to do with a weird shaped bottom and instead is short for Rebuttal Robot Class A whose current job is to watch over the naughtiest children at Astro Academy and keep them out of much trouble as he possibly can), this is a gloriously bonkers and out of this world science-fiction adventure.

The exasperated Butbot certainly has his hands full as the mayhem causing Astronaughties careen from one catastrophe after another. Pressing the ice-cream button that must surely be the gateway to the ice-cream party has disastrous consequences and sets the intrepid explorers on a collision course that involves crashing into the International Space Station, destroying the Hubble Space Telescope and causing plenty of damage to the their own spaceship.

Some delightful nods to the future include the ability to print bones, racing hover boards and receiving messages via hologram. And of course, a theme park on the moon. Would you be brave enough to ride the lunar coaster assuming you could splurge the squillions required to make the journey and pay the entrance fee?

Until moon-based amusement facilities become a thing, we will just to have make do with the exploits and out of control adventures of the Astronaughties and that’s fine by me. Adventures into space have never been so much fun!

With huge thanks to Walker for the copy I received in exchange for an honest review.

Recommended for 7+