The Summer Experiment

Eleven-year-old Roberta (Robbie) lives in Allagash, Maine, notorious (in real life, too) for its UFO sightings and alleged alien abductions. Robbie and her best friend decide to investigate the town's weird goings-on for their school science project. The protagonist's sassy, humorous voice and wild schemes, along with the well-drawn secondary characters and vivid setting, keep things humming.

Eleven-year-old Roberta (Robbie) McKinnon lives in rural Allagash, Maine, a place notorious (in real life, too) for its UFO sightings and alleged alien abductions. Robbie and her best friend Marilee decide to investigate the weird goings-on for their school science project. "If the UFOs won't come to us…then we'll go to the UFOs," says Robbie, as the girls prepare to camp out on Frog Hill. The only alien creatures they encounter are Robbie's older brother Johnny and his best friend Billy Ferguson playing a trick on them -- at first. As the book goes on and the UFO sightings mount, the story moves from realistic fiction into the sci-fi realm… or does it? Pelletier plays with the two genres in ways that keep readers guessing throughout. Much of the story is about ordinary small-town life complete with family dramas (Marilee runs away after meeting her father's new girlfriend); school rivalries (Robbie and Marilee are dying to beat know-it-all Henry Horton Harris Helmsby at the science fair competition); and, yes, cranks who believe in aliens. But they're not all cranks, and even Robbie -- who's "amazingly smart," if she does say so herself -- doesn't know what to believe. The protagonist's sassy, humorous voice and wild schemes, along with the well-drawn secondary characters and vivid setting, keep things humming (or wait, was that the spaceship?). elissa gershowitz