Easy Origami

After he rigs the government lottery for the 27th time in a row, 12-year-old X's father realizes that a vacation is a wise idea, especially one in an obscure spot like Earth, halfway across the galaxy from their home planet Zyrgon. As Family Organizer, X has to make her irresponsible crew fit unobtrusively into a suburban life. It isn't easy. Her mother insists on designing clothes with other- worldly cloth and her father has soon outsmarted Earthly horseraces. Mean while, X's gorgeous older sister Dovis is a center of attention everywhere she goes, and five-year-old Qwrk, who'd been a professor on Zyrgon, has trouble pretending to act his age. Pleasantly zany, like a sitcom (My Favorite Martian combined with Family Ties), this book also tends toward making sitcom moral judgments, with British Commonwealth fair play having it all over third world- ish Zyrgon (a new government every few months, crooked cops, endless brib ery and cheating and more). (812