A Moon Girl Stole My Friend

It’s 2099. Lyla is excited about the new school year and her best friend Bianca’s birthday party. But her morning gets off to a bad start.

She’s running too late to have breakfast so has to chew a Vita-tab instead. She forgot to put Sparks, her cyborg cat, on charge last night so he’s lying around looking dead and Mum is yelling from the Launchpad for her to hurry up and get in the skycar. Oh, and she’s having a really bad hair day.

As if all that wasn’t enough, she gets to school to find that Bianca has invited the super-cool new girl from the Moon Colony to her party instead of inviting Lyla! Could this be the end of their friendship?

Lyla’s world is packed with fantastical innovations like flying sweets and expandable breakfast cereal but the fundamentals of human relationships haven’t changed in a hundred years. The hurt of losing her best friend is just as real, her little brother is just as annoying and the politics of the playground can be just as complex.

This accessible and relatable story is inventive, laced with humour and complemented by intermittent black-and-white illustrations.