Akiko on the Planet Smoo

When fourth grader Akiko finds a spacecraft hovering outside her window one night, she begins the adventure of a lifetime. She is whisked off to the planet Smoo to lead a team searching for the King of Smoo’s kidnapped son. Akiko the head of a rescue mission? She’s afraid to be on the school’s safety patrol! So begins the adventures of Akiko, wherein she meets her team — Spuckler Boach, Gax, Poog, and Mr. Beeba — and sets off on a journey across Smoo to find a prince and become a leader.

Ten-year-old Akiko has an unexpected adventure when she is whisked away to a distant planet and put in charge of the rescue mission that must search for the kidnapped Prince Froptoppit.

When this fourth-grader comes home from school one day, she finds an envelope waiting for her with no stamp and no return address. The message inside reads Dear Akiko: We are coming to get you. Meet us outside your bedroom window tonight at 8:00. Don't forget your toothbrush.

Children's Literature

This book is based on a comic book series that Crilley began writing in 1992. He was teaching in a Japanese school at the time, and Akiko and her adventures became the way he made the lessons exciting. Putting them in book form was a natural outgrowth of that exercise. Akiko, who lives on the seventeenth floor of her apartment building, is approached at her window by a group of aliens. They take her to the planet Smoo, and although she insists that she has no experience in being a detective, she is given the job of finding King Froptoppit's son. Her companions include--a loudmouth who is very like a human teenage boy (a combination of real bravery and bravado), an almost human middle-aged man who might easily be a teacher in Smoo's middle school, a robot named Gax WHO SPEAKS IN CAPITAL LETTERS, but softly, and a creature named Pog who is almost all eyes and who speaks a language that Akiko doesn't understand. Together, they survive being kidnapped by pirates and imprisoned. Then they're forced to fight for their lives in an arena very like Rome's Coliseum. Akiko is remarkably cheerful throughout, and only succumbs to homesickness near the end. But the end of the book is not the end of the adventure. We are left hanging as the crew, in a new spaceship, prepares for more excitement in another book. After all, they haven't found the prince yet. It is fun, but a little strained. Unfortunately, too often the dialogue sounds as if it came from a textbook. Everything is a little too explained. It is certainly fast moving, and if the characters don't seem quite human, well, they're not. It may be good for middle school.

Mark Crilley was raised in Detroit, Mich. After graduating from Kalamazoo College in 1988, he traveled to Taiwan and Japan, where he taught English to students of all ages for nearly five years. It was during his stay in Japan in 1992 that he created Akiko and the story of her journey to Smoo.