SPHDZ

Spaceheadz #1

by Jon Scieszka, Francesco Sedita, Shane Prigmore (Illustrator)

From the National Ambassador of Young People's Literature, comes the spaciest middle grade series this side of earth.  BE SPHDZ.

Michael K. just started fifth grade at a new school. As if that wasn't hard enough, the kids he seems to have made friends with apparently aren't kids at all. They are aliens. Real aliens who have invaded our planet in the form of school children and a hamster. They have a mission to complete: to convince 3,140,001 kids to BE SPHDZ.

But with a hamster as their leader, "kids" who talk like walking advertisements, and Michael K as their first convert, will the SPHDZ be able to keep their cover and pull off their assignment?

Genres: Humor, Science Fiction, Middle Grade, Aliens, Juvenile, Fantasy, Fiction

163 pages, Hardcover

First published June 18, 2010

About the author

Jon Scieszka is an American children's writer, best known for picture books created with the illustrator Lane Smith. He is also a nationally recognized reading advocate, and the founder of Guys Read – a web-based literacy program for boys whose mission is "to help boys become self-motivated, lifelong readers."

Reviews

[Donalyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think that many children (especially boys who may not enjoy reading) will like this silly, quirky story of three aliens that attempt to assimilate into a 5th grade class. I hated that the book so clearly launches a franchise including websites and sequels, though.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another madcap romp from Jon Scieszka. On his first day of school at PS 858, Brooklyn, Michael K. is teamed up with two partners, Bob and Jennifer...well, three--if you count Fluffy, the hamster. While the rest of the class deems the threesome as either foreign (Bulgarian), "weirdos" or "slow" students, Michael K. learns that they are SPHDZ aliens, the majority of whose vocabulary stems from old tv commercials. Michael K. is impatient with their foreign ways and wants to detach himself from them. Will he turn them in to AAA (the Anti-Alien Agency) to rid himself of their company forever? The book "packaging" tells us that every Spaceheadz book is "fortified with all natural websites." This is the feature that makes this book so original: the fluid connection between the words in print and the referenced websites that connect to the outside world. These websites, including the official-looking www.antialienagency.com; the kitschy class site, http://mrshalleyscomets.com/, with its animated teddy bear border; and the official SPHDZ site, www.sphdz.com. I wonder if young readers will get the hilarious deadpan references to products like Charmin toilet paper and the George Forman grill. For librarians, these bogus websites could come in handy for a lesson in evaluating online resources.

[Abby Johnson · Rating 1 out of 5]

What the... what?

I was so excited about this book, but now I'm just... confused. Michael K, new kid in school, gets stuck sitting with two very weird also-new kids in his fifth grade class. They keep telling him they're aliens (Spaceheadz, actually) and that they have to get 3.14 million people to become SPHDZ or the Earth will be turned off. Their only knowledge of the Earth is from commercials and television, so that's their frame of reference.

I can get on board with the wacky. That's not my thing, really, but I know some kids go gaga for it. My problem is that it feels like half a story. And I know that it's the first book in a series, but... nothing really happened. We met the characters. They had some hijinx. And then it ended. There's no real urgency, "turning the Earth off" is never explained. I don't even really get what SPHDZ is (is it just shorthand for "Spaceheadz"?).

Kids may still read it - it's got a good cover and an interesting premise and maybe they'll laugh at all the toilet paper, pickle phones, and head injuries. But I'm still just saying "What the... what?"

**Important to note is that I'm reviewing from an ARC without the final artwork. Maybe the art will help me understand it?**

[Nikki · Rating 1 out of 5]

I came into this with really high hopes. Scieszka wrote "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales," which made me laugh until I cried when I was younger.
SPHDZ just didn't live up. It felt more like a they picked an author who they knew could sell air and tried to find out how many advertisements they could squeeze into 164 pages. The plot fell by the wayside. You have to fork out for the second book to find out what the point of the drama is.
The best thing about this book is that the website the main character made is real. You can become a SPHD and be counted on the giant ticker.

[Lisa · Rating 1 out of 5]

A suprisingly crappy offering from a beloved author that oozes talent. Just to be sure that maybe it was me that just wasn't "getting it", I asked my husband to give it a read. He quickly agreed it was ridiculous, and not in a good way. Not sure what happened, but hoping Scieszka hasn't jumped the shark completely.

[Gaby · Rating 2 out of 5]

I realise this book is meant for kids but it really is ridiculous! I'm not sure I fully understood all that was going on. It was fast paced which was good and the illustrations work with the text well but generally the font and layout made it difficult/unpleasant to read.

[Mary Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun in a crazy, wacky, random way that some readers will love and others will not get at all.

[Beth]

I can see where some would find this funny, but I just couldn't find the humor.

[William Bentrim · Rating 1 out of 5]

Spaceheadz by Jon Sciezka and Francesco Sedita

Michael K. found his first day in his new school even worse than he anticipated. He found himself adopted by three space aliens, the leader in the body of a hamster.

This book seems like it worked too diligently to be cool. The authors have a wealth of credentials and I expected to like it, I didn’t. The premise is fine but the book is bizarrely incoherent. Although that may be ok with the middle school kids this book is targeting. Aliens who take our commercials literally should have been more entertaining. I suspect this will be a hit with the marketing that is planned. I’m going to pass it on to my in-house middle school kid and see what he thinks.

[Vian Selvanathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is about a boy named Michael who finds out that there are aliens on his planet and he has to work with them or else the planet would be destroyed.

I would recommend this book to people who like fiction and aliens.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spaceheadz was an odd one. I became obsessed with this series as a preteen, and it was my first interaction with the power of marketing. It might have been the reason why I considered a career in marketing as a young teenager. This first book, however, was simply decent.

At this early point, it is unclear whether the SPHDZ are actually aliens or just weird kids, at least to me, a clueless kid. The SPHDZ are seen as unusual partially because Bob likes ponies and Jennifer likes professional wrestling, which seems kind of sexist, like only alien boys like ponies or only alien girls like pro wrestling. Michael K is kind of bland, like cereal.

However, Spaceheadz had a unique quality that I liked. I did get sucked into the marketing strategy of these books. I think I learned a lot of lessons from Spaceheadz which I use in daily life. A lot of strange things I like could use some marketing.

[Grace Bryson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is AMAZING! I could not put it down. Even though it has a very childish story-plot, it is very written out. It is very funny! The illustrations are also very interesting. My favorite character is the hamster, because he is very sassy. I recommend this book to anyone who is just trying to laugh or wants a non-serious to always have to pass time. I think anyone could enjoy this book if they like science fiction.

[Erica · Rating 1 out of 5]

2021 March Madness Brackets, paired against The Little Prince. I didn’t get it. Read the whole thing, including the ridiculous chapter with Major Fluffy’s explanation...every word. Kids thought that was hilarious,but as a whole, only my eight-year-old even liked it a little. He doesn’t seem to mind when a book has no...anything. It’s saying something when my 11 year-old boy prefers The Little Prince over this.

[Brenda Wharton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael K just started fifth grade in a brand new school. He meets two new kids in his class who are quite strange and turn out to be aliens. They are sent to earth to recruit more kids to be spaceheadz or earth will be turned off or destroyed. Agent Umber works for an anti Alien agency and is tracking down these strange kids

[Gregg Millman · Rating 5 out of 5]

My son and I read this entire series, and it's awesome. It's about aliens, and special government agents, and kids dealing with all this insanity, like saving the world from alien invasions. All the characters are quirky and memorable. The aliens are particularly great characters, and feel totally original. The entire series is a great mix of zany humor and top-notch thriller-action.

[Lori · Rating 1 out of 5]

Good God I lost respect for the other librarians who chose this book as a BOB book for next year. I guess it's at least a quick read. I did laugh once or twice at certain witty lines, but I think they might be over my kids' heads.

[Yehudis Esther · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was definitely written for eleven year old boys, and I feel the style and humor will definitely be appreciated by that audience. The cartoons throughout were well-placed and helped illustrate the story while still leaving some things to the imagination.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very fun book. Great graphics and interactive bits. An entire chapter written in gerbil. My only complaint is that the reveal is made to the protagonist but not the reader which is frustrating. Otherwise fun and engaging read.

[Lisa Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very cute story about the importance of discussing the tricks of advertising and making new friends.:)

[Jen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is ridiculous. Not in a good way either. Perhaps it would make some sort of sense if I continued to read the series, but I just can't.

[Peble Dropper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really awesome book. It just never really told me the if the aliens were actually aliens.

[Hugh · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think it was funny but it got really boring at some points.

[Pamela Rabon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very weird book, buy kids will probably like it.

[Rebecca Heywood · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually really enjoyed it. Not my favorite if Jon Scieszka, but still enjoyable. It did seem to just hop right in there, without much character building, but beyond that I had no issues

[QuantiFIRE · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was good, though it could have been better.

[Anne Patkau · Rating 3 out of 5]

ReRd. Scieszka is a funny happy creative favorite. Illustrator Prigmore's talent lives up to text. Scieszka has a knack for twisting a familiar premise, aliens, to be new, with the crazy and unexpected. "What comes next?" Or just "What??!!"

Here, Michael K., new at a Brooklyn PS (Public School), is pursued by a strange pair, also new to this Gr 5, so adults repeatedly force the trio together. Weird looking Bob and Jen repeat "SPHDZ", "SPace HeaDz", and TV commercials lines. The plot is especially hard on Umber, Anti-Alien Agent, maybe the only grownup who believes Mike. I don't understand the ending or even the rest, or like being forced to find sequels. Generation post 60-70s might not get the "Get Smart" shoe pickle phone, though I hear many reruns are find-able.

Aliens are coming to help save or to take over world. This pair are scouts. Sign kids up around world to internet site. Why?

52-2022 Nov mini party cover

[Fiver · Rating 2 out of 5]

It may be that the authors of "Spaceheadz" are trying a clever tack in their text, by trying to incorporate a multitude of buzzwords, catchphrases, and jingles into their story so as to be attractive to our current generation of kids (presumably drunk on television).
It may be that the pleasant scientific descriptions at the end of each chapter in this book are meant to sneak some education into the well-watered-down entertainment of these kids.

For those possibilities, and the off chance that I'm simply fooled by what this book looks like, I'll give SPHDZ two stars.

Now, let me tell you what this book LOOKS like.


"Spaceheadz" tells the story of 5th grader "Michael K.", who encounters two zany kid-shaped aliens on his first day of school and spends the day trying to keep them under control. These two child ambassadors have learned everything they know about earth from television, believing every advertising claim and spitting out every jingle, which they've learned by heart. More importantly, they tell Michael that their goal in coming to earth is to recruit one million earthlings to become "Spaceheadz" like them.

Then the book starts dropping the name of its associated website, where kids can download "SPHDZ" stickers to advertise for the book. In the meantime, there's a mediocre plot winding it's way through the book to give the characters a stage on which to spout their product placement.


The writing isn't very good, the story doesn't strike me as intriguing to children (for a story about aliens, all the mysticism and adventure of space travel is entirely absent), and it's an absolute bore to read as an adult (good childrens books are also good adult books... when will authors learn this?). But worst of all, for all the world it looks as if the book series is sneakily trying to excite kids about advertising the books for them, hoping to enlist kids as fellow 'Spaceheadz' converters to rope in other kids in an effort to reach the magic one million quota.

To sum up, the book assumes that children have their heads filled to the brim with advertisements and product catchphrases, and apparently hopes to sneak itself into that space, becoming a best seller strictly by advertising, instead of quality.


From what I've seen and been able to find out, so far the book hasn't succeeded. Let's hope it stays that way.

[Harold Ogle · Rating 3 out of 5]

An easy chapter book for older children (the protagonist is in 5th grade), Spaceheadz is fun in large part because it's so...meta. The conceit of the book is that aliens who've been watching TV for decades have come to Earth to take over, and they spout commercial jingles as aphorisms, believing them to be true (Charmin is a natural construction material, because it's "ultra strong," for example). So you have an illustration of how commercial advertising's insidious claims influence more than we know in this book. But the book presents that the way to combat this is for the reader to go to the Spaceheadz web site and register for an account...effectively, a large part of the book is also a commercial advertisement, or at least an elaborate self-promotional gimmick. Which comes first? The book, that is then promoted by the web site, or was the book written to promote the web site? It's a fascinating parody of the subject that itself does not escape that which it's parodying. That's funny to me.

Thankfully, the book is funny, too. It contains a lot of slapstick (as is typical for this kind of story, there's a clueless bumbling adult who, being an adult, is incapable of understanding what's happening and is thus the butt of most of the jokes), as well as some much-appreciated (by me) absurdity. My favorite line is a classic, one that could be used as the punchline to pretty much any set-up: "Pudding is pretty much just pudding." With such absurdity, context hardly matters; that's just funny inserted after just about any story or assertion. Try bringing that up in your next meeting at work to see what I mean: "I think we should out-source them. What do you think, Johnson?" "I think that taking action now might be too precipitous. I think we can give Barrister & McVeigh enough rope to hang themselves if we just leave the situation alone for a while. They're in too deep. I think that's our best move. And I think that pudding is pretty much just pudding." See? comic gold!

So this is a fun story, a quick read, but nothing that's going to stay with your kid for a long time...at least on a conscious level. The advertising mechanism will train the kid for all kinds of future web-based marketing opportunities, like clicking banner ads or engaging in microtransactions to get a few more phony coins a bit faster in a farming game.

[Meg Mirza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hurrah! Scieszka and Company are in rare form, with this humorous science-fiction middle-grade adventure. Fifth-grader Michael K. gets stuck with the task of showing two new kids, Bob and Jennifer, the ropes in Mrs. Halley's classroom. He quickly realizes that they are both out-of-this world... literally, from another planet. The only information that Jennifer, Bob and their hamster leader, Major Fluffy, have about planet Earth is from television commercials, beamed into space. Media-savvy readers will recognize many of the catchphrases and slogans that Bob and Jennifer employ in their conversation.

The kids manage to stay one step ahead of bumbling Agent Umber of the Anti-Alien Agency despite his phalanx of super-spy gadgets, including the Pickle Phone, a box of cereal that turns into a laptop computer and a giant taco disguise.

I found the spelling of Spaceheads - rendered throughout the text as SPHDZ - a little distracting at first but after a little while I got used to it.

Some of the best story content is featured on accompanying websites, full of Easter eggs and additional jokes and information, including www.mrshalleyscomets.com. This website is a brilliant send-up of many teachers' poorly designed efforts, complete with plenty of clashing colors, busy patterns, flashing extras, Comic Sans font and cheery "inspirational" quotes. Agent Umber's somewhat official looking "government" website www.antialienagency.com has most links leading to an ominous pop-up reading, "Access Denied. You do not have sufficient security clearance to view this page." However, some careful poking around will lead to case file reports of The Fried Santa Incident, and a rather silly set of highly bureaucratic forms, including Shoe Replacement and Suit Pocket Addition Forms.

Similar in theme, but weightier than Daniel Pinkwater's Fat Men from Space novella, less scatological than but just as fast paced and hilarious as Andy Griffith's The Day My Butt Went Psycho, I would recommend this for readers aged 8-10.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Summary
(From Amazon.com) Michael K. just started fifth grade at a new school. As if that wasn't hard enough, the kids who want to be friends with him apparently aren't kids at all. They are aliens. Real aliens who have invaded our planet in the form of school children and a hamster. They have a mission to complete: to convince 3,140,001 kids to BE SPHDZ so that the Earth will not be “turned off” thus depriving the interstellar civilizations of our tasty TV and radio waves containing commercials, jingles and ads. However, Agent Umber of the secretive Anti-Alien Agency (AAA) is on their trail, but as the bumbling, slow guy, and master of many ridiculous disguises he never seems to be in the right place at the right time, nor can he convince anyone that aliens have indeed landed.
My Comments
I tried to like this book because I like Jon Scieszka. His Time Warp Trio series is pretty funny, his autobiography is a hoot, and he is a hilarious speaker. I attended a book conference where he promoted this book, and with the digital tie-ins, it seemed like a cool idea for a new series. However, I did not like Spaceheadz at all. It’s weird, relies too much on an overused plot, and there is no character development. The main concentration of the book is the “zany” illustrations and text. There are lots of black and white pages, some pages are in all black with white text; there are crooked pages, upside down pages, pages with just SPHDZ stickers, and then a couple of pages in hamster language ( eeks and squeaks). It seems as if Scieskza is just filling up space with this gimmicky stuff and totally ignoring any kind of plot or character development. Several websites mentioned in the book actually work and are supposed to provide clues to the whole SPHDZ concept and future books. This is a pretty novel idea that I think might appeal to kids. Also, at 163pages, double spaced with lots of blank spaces and illustrations, it’s a quick read, but Diary of a Wimpy Kid is soooo much better. Spaceheadz is definitely a boy book, probably best for ages 7 – 10.