Hey, Kids, It's My First GoodReads Review! The Starlighter by Christoffer Petersen

The Starlighter by Christoffer Petersen


When I was a young boy growing up in Baltimore, Maryland, I fell in love with astronomy. We were a family barely clinging to the bottom of the middle class, and there were times when mom had to rob Peter to pay Paul, but she somehow managed to buy me a small telescope for Christmas one year. I'd take it out into the backyard along with a footstool, set the telescope with its short tripod on the stool, then scrunch down and search the cold night sky. I remember looking at Mars and trying to draw what I saw, fancying myself a latter day Galileo. And catching sight of Jupiter's Big Red Spot. But mostly I looked at the moon or searched out stars, using a chart to identify them by name. My mom would often come out to look with me. Maybe even always. She was that kind of mom.

It was a magical time, for sure.

And as I read my advance reader's copy of Christoffer Petersen's The Starlighter, I found myself thinking of those days in the backyard. Because one of the things that Christoffer Petersen does really well is capture the magic of the night sky. And the magic of being a child.

So far as I know, this is Mr. Petersen's first children's book. And there's something about a good children's book which has always attracted me. Maybe it's a lack of pretension. Maybe it's just a more straightforward approach to story telling. But The Little Prince, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates...these are stories which are near and dear to my heart.

Now, while The Starlighter is ostensibly science fiction, if you're a hard science kind of person, you're going to find some bones to pick here. For instance, when Jayla and her friends look up into the night sky and see creatures (let's leave it at that to keep the spoilers to a minimum), you might wonder just how big these things are if they can be seen through a backyard telescope. (I'm no astronomer--I'm sorry to say that I gave that dream up after the 6th grade--but I think the answer is at least as big as Jupiter.) And you might wonder how these creatures can possibly pose an immediate threat to Earth, since they'd have to be at least a couple of light years distant. But as Harrison Ford said to a young Mark Hamill on the set of the first (1977) Star Wars set..."It's not that kind of movie, kid."

The Starlighter is a thriller which is strongly focused on kids--Jayla, her friend Cherry, and a boy who goes by the name Waston--who, due to circumstances beyond their control, have to take up the slack for the adults in order to save the world...something along the lines of a League of Greta Thunbergs. But more ethnically diverse.

If you're a fan of Christoffer Petersen, then you already know how fast he can make you turn the pages of a book. If you're not already a fan, then this is a good introduction...coming soon to a bookseller near you! Watch for it.

And hopefully you'll also give some of his other books a shot. I'm particularly fond of the Greenland Crime stories which star Constable David Maratse, who is one of my favorite fictional characters in modern literature.

And good news for you Kindle readers: you can get the first book in the Greenland Crime series, Seven Graves, One Winter, for a mere 99¢ on Amazon. Or, for an even better deal, go to Christoffer Petersen's Kickstarter campaign, pledge $4 (-ish), and you can get Seven Graves, One Winter, another novel entitled End of the Line, and and End of the Line spin-off story. That's a whole lot of e-love for $4. But however you go about it, get you some Christoffer Petersen asap.

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