Cerberus Jones (text), Craig Phillips (illus.), The Lost Home World (The Gateway #7), Hardie Grant Egmont, 1 Sept 2016, 144pp., $14.99 (pbk) ISBN 9781760126889
The Lost Home World marks the seventh and penultimate book in The Gateway series and continues the adventures of friends Amelia and Charlie. Amelia’s parents own The Gateway Hotel, an old building with wormholes that permit intergalactic travel. The hotel hosts an imaginative mix of aliens and humans, some friendly and some threatening, which causes all kinds of havoc for everyone.
In The Lost Home World, a dashing new visitor arrives, claiming to be the lost brother of mysterious alien and long-term friend, Lady Naomi. At first the family struggles to resolve their feelings about Naomi’s imminent departure, but doubts soon creep in that the new visitor is not all that he seems.
The unusual, intriguing premise of this series invites all kinds of sci-fi and mystery fun for girls and boys alike. Although the family monitors the gateway, there’s plenty of potential for alien mayhem and hotel invasion, such as a horde of tiny purple-horned, double dragon-tailed bats. The characters of Amelia and Charlie are relatable and kids will identify with their efforts to find solutions to the many problems they face, often behind their parents’ backs.
Newcomers to the series may struggle to understand past events and the backgrounds of the characters, especially at the beginning, so it may be best to start with The Four-Fingered Man, the first book in the series. The setting is Australian, but sparse enough that overseas readers should find the references interesting rather than off-putting.
Recommended as an entertaining chapter book for readers aged 7+.
Author Cerberus Jones is the three-headed writing team of Chris Morphew, Rowan McAuley and David Harding. Separately they’ve published many books for kids including The Phoenix Files series (Chris), the Go Girl series (Rowan) and the Israel Folau series (David, with Izzy Folau). You can read more about Chris on his website and more about Rowan on her website.
Illustrator Craig Phillips lives in Middle Earth aka New Zealand. His comics have been serialised in children’s literary magazines and he illustrates for clients such as Random House, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, Scholastic, Bloomsbury, Egmont, Hardie Grant, and many more. You can read more about Craig, and see some of his amazing work, on his website.
Reviewed by Georgina Ballantine
