Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Stuck on Earth
    Unavailable
    Stuck on Earth
    Unavailable
    Stuck on Earth
    Ebook209 pages3 hours

    Stuck on Earth

    By David Klass

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Ketchvar III's mission is simple: travel to Planet Earth, inhabit the body of an average teenager, and determine if the human race should be annihilated. And so Ketchvar—who, to human eyes, looks just like a common snail—crawls into the brain of one Tom Filber and attempts to do his analysis. At first glance, Tom appears to be the perfect specimen—fourteen years old, good health, above average intelligence. But it soon becomes apparent that Tom Filber may be a little too average—gawky, awkward, and utterly abhorred by his peers. An alien within an alien's skin, Ketchvar quickly finds himself wrapped up in the daily drama of teenage life—infuriating family members, raging bullies, and undeniably beautiful next-door neighbors. And the more entangled Ketchvar becomes, the harder it is to answer the question he was sent to Earth to resolve: Should the Sandovinians release the Gagnerian Death Ray and erase the human species for good? Or is it possible that Homo sapiens really are worth saving?

    Wickedly wry and hysterically skewed, David Klass's take on teen life on our fabulously flawed Planet Earth is an engrossing look at true friends, truer enemies, and awkward alien first kisses.
    Stuck on Earth is a 2011 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateMar 16, 2010
    ISBN9781429944373
    Unavailable
    Stuck on Earth
    Author

    David Klass

    David Klass is the author of many young adult novels, including You Don't Know Me, Losers Take All, and Grandmaster. He is also a Hollywood screenwriter, having written more than twenty-five action screenplays, including Kiss the Girls, starring Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd, Walking Tall, starring The Rock, and Desperate Measures, starring Michael Keaton and Andy Garcia. Klass grew up in a family that loved literature and theater-his parents were both college professors and writers-but he was a reluctant reader, preferring sports to books. But he started loving the adventure stories his parents would bring home from the library-particularly Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson and Alexandre Dumas. After his sister twice won a story contest in Seventeen magazine, Klass decided he would win it too, and when he was a senior in high school, he did, publishing his first story, "Ringtoss," in the magazine. He studied at Yale University, where he won the Veech Award for Best Imaginative Writing. He taught English in Japan, and wrote his first novel, The Atami Dragons, about that experience. He now lives in New York with his wife and two children.

    Related to Stuck on Earth

    Related ebooks

    Children's Social Themes For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Final Truth

      Jan 21, 2020

      The Final Truth
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Code of Hammurabi

      Nov 5, 2019

      The Code of Hammurabi
      12 min read

    • Article

      Morbidity & the Miniature

      May 11, 2018

      Morbidity & the Miniature
      14 min read

    • Article

      Tuskers

      Jul 1, 2018

      Tuskers
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Hat Man

      Nov 10, 2021

      The Hat Man
      2 min read

    • Article

      Notes From A Nothing

      Feb 14, 2020

      Notes From A Nothing
      13 min read

    • Article

      The longest Night

      Mar 28, 2022

      The longest Night
      13 min read

    • Article

      TOO SCARED To Sleep

      Jun 11, 2019

      TOO SCARED To Sleep
      4 min read

    • Article

      Ben Marcus

      Jun 15, 2018

      My wife, Gin, once knocked gently on my head, as if it were a door. “Hello,” she kept saying. “Hello. Who’s in there?” She and our therapist, Dr. Sherby, laughed a little about this, so I did, too. What fun. Keep knocking on my head like that, like i

      23 min read

    • Article

      Quantum Physics for Mothers

      Dec 15, 2020

      Quantum Physics for Mothers
      10 min read

    • Article

      Dark Tales

      Dec 2, 2021

      Dark Tales
      6 min read

    • Article

      John Jeremiah Sullivan

      Mar 9, 2021

      John Jeremiah Sullivan
      27 min read

    • Article

      Get That Sea Cucumber Out Of Here!

      Feb 3, 2022

      My kid came home from school yesterday and asked me if I knew what a Sea Lemon was. I told him I had no idea but that it would probably make me retch. Turns out I was right. It’s a kind of Sea Slug, yellow, green or brown, with warty lumps and feathe

      3 min read

    • Article

      Under An Inky Moon

      Feb 2, 2020

      Under An Inky Moon
      4 min read

    • Article

      Free As A Bird

      Jan 25, 2024

      Free As A Bird
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Biologist Blowing Our Minds

      Jun 28, 2023

      Michael Levin, a developmental biologist at Tufts University, has a knack for taking an unassuming organism and showing it’s capable of the darnedest things. He and his team once extracted skin cells from a frog embryo and cultivated them on their ow

      9 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Mar 1, 2019

      I was like you once, a sealed plastic bag of water filters floating on the sea. I thought my numbers proved my time and space on earth. I thought having children was a way of creating more love. I thought thoughts I was ashamed to speak in case they

      15 min read

    • Article

      Unwante Guests Ed

      Aug 3, 2021

      Unwante Guests Ed
      4 min read

    • Article

      A Souvenir of Me

      Nov 15, 2022

      A Souvenir of Me
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Small Talk

      May 26, 2023

      The Art Of Small Talk
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Stuck on Earth

    4/5

    33 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Stuck on Earth by David Klass is about Ketchvar III doing reconnaissance work in the body of a teenage boy. His goal — decide if Earth should be annihilated. Ketchvar is a snail shaped and sized creature, small enough to slip into the head of Tom Filber.Tom's isn't exactly happy. There's a lot of home stress — enough so that those who know Tom begin to suspect he's cracking under the pressure. Interestingly, Ketchvar begins to believe this story too.Ketchvar, though, gets caught up in Tom's life and like Marc Chang of Fairly OddParents, grows to love Earth for all its dysfunction. For this reason, I imaged Chang's booming somewhat surfer dude voice as Ketchvar's.I found the book a light and enjoyable read. There were a few moments that made me think — Tom's inner dialog with Ketchvar as a stand in for mental illness, and the environmental questions — is the world better off with or without mankind.
    • 2/5
      Some kids will like this. I didn't.
    • 4/5
      when a common snail inhabits the body of a nerdy fourteen-year-old we are all treated to an alternate view of teenage life on this planet
    • 3/5
      Picked this up as an ARC from ALA.

      I've only read one other of Klass's books--You Don't Know Me, which hits a lot of the same notes of family dysfunction. Unfortunately, the device wrapped around it here (that an alien has taken over a 14-year-old boy to see if the human race is worth saving) doesn't work as well. There's not much subtlety; messages about bullying and environmentalism are delivered with heavy-handed didacticism, couched in the guise of an impartial observer. Middle-schoolers might appreciate this, and it's a perfectly serviceable read to while away an afternoon, but Klass has done better.
    • 4/5
      An alien, Ketchvar III, is charged by the Galatic Federation, with the task of inhabiting the brain of a 14 year old Tom Filber in order to determine the fate of the entire human species on behalf of the Lugonians, a race needing a planet because their sun is going supernova shortly. Ketchvar must determine whether it would be acceptable to take over Earth and kill all the humans, who currently are not well regarded among the Federation. They beam the boy aboard the spacecraft, and Ketchvar tries to prepare Tom for what is about to happen. "It won't hurt," I promise him."It will all be over in a second.""What won't hurt? What are you going to do?""Nothing terrible, so try to stay calm," I assure him climbing up his leg. "I'm just going to slither through your nostril, crawl into your cranium, and take possession of your brain."Initially, I thought this was a great book for those looking for humor, because it starts off with some very funny scenes, but it quickly becomes more serious since Tom lives in a dysfunctional family, with a father who is out of work, and who drinks to drown his sorrows, a bitter mom and a mean sister. Tom has a crush on the girl who lives next door, Michelle Peabody, but she isn't really interested in him initially. Tom is a target for bullies and Michelle really thinks he needs to stick up for himself. Ketchvar quickly comes to the conclusion that humans are cruel and miserable. Thankfully, he later encounters some humans who change his opinion. Stuck on Earth takes a thought provoking look at humanity. It also contains an important environmental message. Since it's a pretty fast read, it would be appreciated by an average male reader, who is intelligent enough to appreciate the humor and sensitive enough to empathize with Tom's situation.