THE BLACK HOLE DEBACLE

Astro nut Jordie fully appreciates the gravity of the situation when a black hole appears inside her school desk.

In an episode that leaves no pun unturned, the unwelcome if exciting visitor, showing “less-than-stellar” manners, quickly gobbles down Jordie’s crayons, lunchbox, and other stuff—and worse, once she contrives to sneak it home, everything in her room (except a pair of unicorn underwear), including her dog, Neptune. There’s nothing for it but to take the plunge herself despite the discomfort of feeling her body stretching out like a noodle (a gravity effect that astrophysicists, as Boyle explains in an afterword, evocatively call being “spaghettified”) and the fact that there’s no obvious way to escape since black holes trap even light. In the cartoon illustrations, Jordie, a light-skinned child with unruly blond hair, faces off against a growing black blot with googly eyes as her parents, her brown-skinned teacher, and her racially diverse classmates remain oblivious. Readers may wonder how she’s ever going to get out of her predicament, but, being observant as well as clever (a good combination for a budding scientist), she has a snappy solution that she pulls out of her pocket as soon as she’s gathered up her noodled pooch and other possessions. Then she boots the voracious vagrant into the sky, where it can “graze galaxies and slurp stars” to its heart’s content. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Readers will be sucked in despite the certainty of spaghettification.