Spaced Out: Moon Base Alpha, Book 2

Each chapter is prefaced with cautions and warnings from the base handbook. Characters face frequent peril on moon due to broken helmets, torn suits, meteor showers, extreme temperatures, and limited life support systems. Bullies physically menace other children, sometimes with encouragement from their parents. One family deliberately provokes others at the base and steals from the community. An authority figure threatens troublemakers with a physical beating. A victim retaliates against a bully by sticking a toilet suction hose onto his face. A child is choked by another. An adult physically assaults and threatens a child. A series of virtual-reality games inspired by Shakespeare involves lots of realistic swordplay.

A Romeo and Juliet virtual-reality fighting game includes kissing.

Tween insults such as "jerk" and "turdface."

Parents need to know that Spaced Out is a smart, enjoyable mystery by Stuart Gibbs (the FunJungle series), though it doesn't do much to move along the Moon Base Alpha series and can easily be enjoyed as a stand-alone story. Like the first book, this one delivers a high-stakes mystery to be solved -- this time, it's a race to find and hopefully save the lunar outpost's missing commander. A rich family that paid to live on the moon is cartoonishly evil, greedily stealing valuable resources, threatening others, and even encouraging their son to beat up other children. Adults are generally concerned for the welfare of others and and attentive to children, but they too become physically aggressive when angry. The scientists and families living on the moon are extremely bright, but their emotional and interpersonal skills generally aren't as strong. It's a pointedly diverse cast of characters, though one off note is a portrayal of a "purely Caucasian" family as unattractive.