You Can't Have my Planet, But Take my Brother Please by James Mihaley

245 pages

"Giles is the last person anyone would expect to save the planet. He's not as charming as his little sister, and certainly not as brainy as his goody-goody older brother. But when Giles witnesses an alien realtor showing the planet to possible new tenants, he knows someone better step in and save the world. Humans have messed it up--an alien mediator tells Giles that if he can manage to clean up Manhattan, then maybe they'll let us stay on the planet a little while longer. He can ask for help from three other humans (should he ask his brother? his best friend?), and the aliens also give him an 'attorney,' a droid in the shape of a parking meter, and access to one of the maddest scientists in middle-grade literature. Can Giles save the planet? Let's hope so." -Dust Jacket

I picked this one for our July family read. I honestly couldn't wait to be done with this book. I wanted to stop reading about a third of the way through but because we do an activity with the book I had to finish to figure out what I wanted to do. I enjoyed it so little that I finally decided that our activity would be a concentration game with ways to help the environment just so I wouldn't have to remember specifics about this story.  It was so badly edited, as in the worst I've probably ever seen with typos and all kinds of mistakes. It was also a book that you could tell the author just really wanted to get an environmental message across so he crafted a bad story to fit it.

My youngest is still trying to make her way through it. I've extended the deadline for finishing a few times. The older two finished but didn't really like it either. There were a few sort of funny parts but the characters weren't memorable. The author could have just said, "Hey kids, do your part to take care of the planet" and saved us all the drudgery of 200+ pages.