Adventures of the PSS 118

PSS 118 is just your typical school-except that it's a rickety old spaceship orbiting Jupiter. When the school is mysteriously attacked, thirteen-year-old Jack receives a cryptic message from his father (the school's recently-fired-for-tinkering-with-the-ship science teacher). Amidst the chaos, Jack discovers that his dad has built humanity's first light-speed engine-and given Jack control of it. To save the ship, Jack catapults it hundreds of light-years away and right into the clutches of the first aliens humans have ever seen. School hasn't just gotten out: it's gone clear across the galaxy. And now it's up to Jack and his friends to get everyone home.

After the entire population of Earth's solar system is, whisked away by alien technology, Jack and his classmates and teachers aboard the PSS 118 are the only humans left. It's up to them to find and rescue the rest of humanity, if they can avoid the aliens hunting them down, steer clear of a robot civil war, and figure out who among them might be a traitor.

Jack's eighth-grade year aboard the PSS 118 is coming to an end. And the students and faculty of the best public schoolship in the galaxy (if it does say so itself) are on the verge of completing their mission. If all goes well, they'll soon foil the sinister alien plot that's put all of humanity in danger. But this is still middle school. So all does not go well. When the original plan backfires, it's up to Jack, Ari, and Becka to take on the evil Minister one more time and make the galaxy safer for everyone. "Levy artfully folds serious personal and parental issues into his less-than-serious round of chases, narrow squeaks, team building, and . . . space battles on the way to a happy resolution and a delayed but properly heartwarming eighth grade graduation ceremony."-Kirkus Reviews