"THE DOOM MACHINE," by Mark Teague, Scholastic, 384 pages, $17.95 (ages 10 and up)
The year is 1956. A flying saucer has landed in Vern Hollow, and Jack Creedle, known for stretching the truth at times, has seen it.
Everyone's skeptical, including a Dr. Shumway, a traveling lady scientist, and her daughter, Isadora.
But the saucer is real, and it contains 9-foot-tall spider-like aliens called Skreeps, who have ruined their own planet and are trying to take over Earth.
But first, they must have an invention created by Jack's Uncle Bud. It is a dimensional field destabilizer that makes fourth-dimensional tunnels for space travel. With that machine, they will be able to rule the galaxy.
The Skreeps, led by Commander Xaafuun, who hates uurth (earth) and all ooman bings (human beings), kidnaps Jack, Isadora, Dr. Shumway, Sergeant Webb and his son, Grady, and Uncle Bud, along with the refrigerator housing the destabilizer.
Thus begins an interstellar adventure jammed with humorous characters, slick mishaps and narrow escapes.
Mark Teague's tongue-in-cheek science-fiction odyssey is complimented with many black-and-white sketches, which add to the humor.
His Alice-in-Wonderland-like characters are brought to life in descriptions of full-bellied cranneks and "salamanders with round eyes perched on top of two stalks."
The inventive language leaves the reader tongue twisting around names such as Duweekn, Huursk, Hroag, the planet Riibeenx, Qurya and the city of Parnadan.
Jack wonders why some of them "looked like Uncle Dwayne in a way."
Each reader will take away some bit of story that delights them best.
Mine was the illogical logic where Pungo explains the warping of time in Hellebeezia, a place where today, tomorrow and yesterday are merged into one.
The description is again reminiscent of Alice's trip underground:
"You are always here, but you are always not here. That means that you must leave, because otherwise you would not always not be here … It is simple logic."
Readers 10 and up will find Teague's "Doom Machine" delightfully inventive, maybe clamoring for more adventures of Jack Creedle.
e-mail: marilou.sorensen@att.net