Dear Earthling was an adorable middle-grade sci-fi story with fun illustrations. It's about a kid who is a Space Cadet, which is basically a Boy's Scout in space. The chapters are all fairly short, as they are letters the main character writes to his human penpal.

The planet where Dethbert lives, Crank, is sort of like Earth in a parallel universe. Most of their things have names that are horrible puns on Earth names, like "bored games", "Duesday", "When?sday" and so forth. I admit that the puns got a little too much for me eventually and I groaned at many of them, but I'm sure kids would appreciate them more.

Dethbert is a good who gets into trouble and fights with his friends sometimes, but he also has a big heart, and many eccentric friends and family members. Overall, I found this a really endearing sci-fi story that is perfect for preteens.

One thing that made me pause was the mention of one kid's parent being a missionary who was nearly eaten by "cannibalistic savages" that he tried to convert. That story has pretty negative connotations, and I feel like it was really unnecessary to include it, since it's not even a big plot point or anything.