My Year as a Space Cadet
My Year as a Space Cadet
While my parents were finishing up their work contracts in Saudi Arabia, I continued to live with my aunt and uncle and cousins on Prince Edward Island. I was extremely nervous about this change of events. Although my passport said I was Canadian, I had never actually spent much time in my home country. Would I fit in? Would my citizenship be taken from me if it became known that I was not a hockey fan and that I had a weird dislike of maple syrup? …What really gave me the jitters, however, was the prospect of attending junior high school at Shale Pit Academy of Creativity and Excellence, more commonly known by its acronym, SPACE. Students there had been given the unflattering nickname of SPACE cadets by a rival junior high. …Well, what could be interesting about a year in the life of a junior high student, you may be wondering. Hmm…how do I entice you to keep reading without giving too much away? Okay, I’ll give you a two-word teaser: prank war.
After the eventful summer camp Page created in Welcome to Camp Fill-in-the-Blank, Page is now starting grade 9 at her new school, SPACE. Full of anxiety, Page finds her first day even more nerve-wracking as she discovers there was a clerical error that put her in an all-boys classroom! But, luckily, her best friend, DeLorey, gets added to the class providing some relief. Days pass as Page gets used to navigating her new school, but things become rather eventful again when a trash talk sign at a field hockey game incites the opposing team to vandalize the SPACE school sign. SPACE students, of course, retaliate by vandalizing the opposing school until finally the principal steps in with detentions and an attempt to calm the rivalry between the two schools by creating a social studies trivia match. Page finds herself appointed team captain for the trivia contest and must wrangle her unenthused classmates into studying for the contests. As Page learns how to engage her cohort, she realizes that she just has to find what each person is passionate about and turn that into social studies fun. A whole lot of bonding ensues and culminates with a massive win at the final trivia contest. Not only did Page empower her classmates to believe in themselves, but she also ended the school year with many new friends.
While the first book, Welcome to Camp Fill-in-the-Blank, was full of summer activity ideas, this book is full of social studies facts that are presented in a fun way as compared to reading a textbook. Anxiety is a topic throughout as this is something Page struggles with, but readers also learn techniques to handle anxiety, with one example being Page’s keeping a worry stone in her pocket that helps calm her nerves. There are brief mentions of bullying, but there are a whole lot more of friendship, and readers are left with a good feeling as they read this book. The writing style is pretty simple with lots of short sentences and page breaks, and there isn’t a lot of character development or descriptive settings. However, the action moves along quickly making My Year as a Space Cadet a good fit for reluctant readers or those that are new to longer chapter books. Dalvay’s book is a quaint, feel-good read that would appeal to kids interested in social studies or books about friendship.
Stephanie Johnson is a graduate of the Master of Library and Information Studies Program from the University of Alberta and is the Director of Devon Public Library in Devon, Alberta.