Take Me to Your Reader

In 1969, approximately 600 million people—the largest television audience ever up to that point—tuned in to watch Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong step off the Apollo 11 lunar module and take those historic steps on the surface of the moon.

Astronauts have always been my superheroes. I have such tremendous respect for the intense physical, mental, and intellectual work that goes into becoming an astronaut and working at NASA. When I was working as a publicist at Dell Publishing, one of our authors, Marilyn Hamel, was dating Buzz Aldrin, and my date (now my husband, Jeff) and I got to have dinner with them during a book tour. That was thrilling.

I found out years later that Buzz grew up in Montclair, New Jersey, where I now live. I drive by his childhood middle school, which they renamed after him, practically every day. Buzz’s mother’s maiden name coincidentally was Moon.

While it was thrilling to meet an astronaut, I'm not sure how I would feel about meeting an alien. When Jigsaw Jones and his classmates discover a mysterious note tucked into a book from the new Little Free Library, all evidence suggests an alien is going to be visiting their school in A Jigsaw Jones Mystery: The Case from Outer Space, the Scholastic Book Clubs Book of the Week. But who could the visitor really be?

Solving mysteries is elementary for kid detective Theodore “Jigsaw” Jones and his best friend, Mila Yeh, as they investigate marshmallow monsters, stinky science projects, and disappearing dinosaurs in James Preller’s series for young readers, which has sold more than 10 million copies since 1998. The Case from Outer Space is the 33rd book of the series and is illustrated by R. W. Alley.