George and Annie explore the galaxy in this cosmic adventure from Stephen Hawking and Lucy Hawking, complete with essays from Professor Hawking about the latest in space travel. George is heartbroken when he learns that his friend Annie and her father are moving to the US. Eric has a new job working for the space program, looking for signs of life in the Universe. Eric leaves George with a gift—a book called The User’s Guide to the Universe . But Annie and Eric haven’t been gone for very long when Annie believes that she is being contacted by aliens, who have a terrible warning for her. George joins her in the US to help her with her quest—and before he knows it, he, Annie, Cosmos, and Annie’s annoying cousin Emmett have been swept up in a cosmic treasure hunt, spanning the whole galaxy and beyond. Lucy Hawking's own experiences in zero-gravity flight and interviews with astronauts at Cape Kennedy and the Johnson Space Center lend the book a sense of realism and excitement that is sure to fire up imaginations. The book includes essays written by Professor Hawking and his colleagues, in which they provide the latest thoughts on space travel. Grade 5–8—George and Annie, the middle-school cosmologists in the Hawkings' George's Secret Key to the Universe (S & S, 2007), return in a sequel that, if not spellbinding, will please fans of the first book. Annie's scientist dad, Eric, is called from the UK to America to oversee a robot probe bound for Mars. Soon after, Annie invites George to visit and join her on a "cosmic mission." When he arrives, she shows him a coded message she thinks may have come from aliens, which she found on her father's broken super-laptop Cosmos. It suggests that if they can't crack the code, Earth will be destroyed. With the help of Emmett, a super-geek genius, they repair Cosmos and can once again travel the planets and stars. Meanwhile, Eric's robot probe arrives on Mars and behaves bizarrely. Brief essays on cosmology interspersed between the chapters expand on the topics Annie, George, and Eric mention, plus color photos of heavenly phenomena. Fun cartoon drawings throughout carry along the unsubtle tale whose message seems to be "Wow! Isn't science great?"— Walter Minkel, Austin Public Library, TX END "[Will] please fans of the first book." ― School Library Journal Lucy Hawking, Stephen Hawking’s daughter, is a journalist and novelist. She is the coauthor of the George’s Secret Key series for kids, as well as the author of the adult novels Jaded and Run for Your Life. She lives in Cambridge with her son. Stephen Hawking was a brilliant theoretical physicist and is generally considered to have been one of the world’s greatest thinkers. He held the position of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for thirty years and is the author of A Brief History of Time , which was an international bestseller. His other books for general readers include A Briefer History of Time , the essay collection Black Holes and Baby Universes , The Universe in a Nutshell , The Grand Design , and Black Holes: The BBC Reith Lectures , as well as the books in the George’s Secret Key series. He died in 2018. Garry Parsons is the award-winning illustrator of many books, including George’s Secret Key to the Universe , George’s Cosmic Treasure Hunt , George and the Big Bang , George and the Unbreakable Code , and George and the Blue Moon by Lucy and Stephen Hawking; Billy’s Bucket by Kes Gray; and What’s Cool About School by Kate Agnew. He lives in London. Visit him at GarryParsons.co.uk. George?s Cosmic Treasure Hunt Chapter 1 It hadn’t been easy to decide what to wear. “Come as your favorite space object,” he’d been told by Eric Bellis, the scientist next door, who had invited George to his costume party. The problem was, George had so many favorite outer-space objects, he hadn’t known which one to pick. Should he dress up as Saturn with its rings? Perhaps he could go as Pluto, the poor little planet that wasn’t a planet anymore? Or should he go as the darkest, most powerful force in the Universe—a black hole? He didn’t think too long or hard about that—as amazing, huge, and fascinating as black holes are, they didn’t really count as his favorite space objects. It would be quite hard to get fond of something that was so greedy, it swallowed up anything and everything that came too close, including light. In the end George had his mind made up for him. He’d been looking at images of the Solar System on the Internet with his dad when they came across a picture sent back from a Mars rover, one of the robots exploring the planet’s surface. It showed what looked like a person standing on the red planet. As soon as he saw the photo, George knew he wanted to go to Eric’s party as the Man from Mars. Even George’s dad, Terence, got excited when he saw it. Of course, they both knew it wasn’t really a Martian in the picture—it was just an illusion c