01/01/2015
Gr 7 Up—On Dick's futuristic Earth, pets are illegal, jobs are rationed, and school is taught in multiple classrooms by one teacher. Nick and his family face the Anti-Pet Man when news of their secret cat gets out. To save Horace, they leave Earth for Plowman's Planet, a 10-day journey into space. Awaiting them there are colonists caught between alien species, who are at war with each other. Nick encounters Glimmung, the most feared creature on the planet, who guards a book that tells the future. Horace gets snatched by the werjes, and Nick recruits the spiddles to help rescue him. Written in 1966, Dick's only YA book introduces young readers to concepts of government-controlled labor and housing, space colonization, video-teleconferencing, and 3-D printing. The plot is often difficult to follow and the dialogue stilted, but the overall entertainment value is sustained by the performance of Nick Podehl as narrator.—Alice Davidson, Indianapolis, IN