Akiko and her crew — Spuckler Boach, Mr. Beeba, Poog, and Gax — have faced dangers unimaginable to the average fourth-grade earthling. Now their mission is finally coming to an end. At last they’ve reached the castle of Alia Rellapor — but that doesn’t mean that things have gotten any easier. The castle is heavily guarded by robots and getting inside won’t be easy. If they do get in, they have to locate Prince Froptoppit, free him from captivity, and escape from the castle without alerting the guards or their leader, the half man — half machine Throck. Can a girl who’s too scared to be school safety leader pull it off? If anyone can, Akiko can!

When Akiko’s Smoovian friends, Poog, Mr. Beeba, Gax, and Spuckler Boach, swing by to pick her up in an astroshuttle, she’s feeling bored with her “normal” life and more than ready to go—anywhere. What she doesn’t know is that King Froptoppit has enrolled them all in the Intergalactic Space Patrollers Training Camp on Zarga Baffa. Every planet in the universe relies on patrollers for protection, but no one from Smoo has ever graduated. Akiko and her crew are the planet’s last hope. After a freak accident at nearby Virpling Canyon, Akiko’s crew faces the ultimate final exam. Will Akiko go home, leaving the rescuing to others? Or will she stay and risk everything?

At the start of summer vacation, 4th grader Akiko is whisked off to the planet Smoo and must rescue its prince.

When this fourth-grader comes home from school one day, she finds an envelope waiting for her with no stamp and no return address. The message inside reads Dear Akiko: We are coming to get you. Meet us outside your bedroom window tonight at 8:00. Don't forget your toothbrush. How could anyone meet her outside her window? She lives on the 17th floor, for goodness sake. But that evening, as Akiko is preparing to study for tomorrow's geography test, she finds a small spacecraft hovering outside her window with two odd little men inside. They have been sent to whisk Akiko off to the Planet Smoo where she will lead a team enlisted to find the King of Smoo's kidnapped son, Prince Froptoppit. Akiko, the leader of a rescue mission? She's too timid to be on the school's safety patrol! So begins Akiko's adventure across the land of Smoo to find a prince and become a leader.

Akiko's back! No longer simply a shy fourth-grade girl, she's become an intergalactic leader, taking her band of would-be heroes on a quest to find a kidnapped prince! Armed with a map showing the way to Alia Rellapor's castle, Akiko, Mr. Beeba, Spuckler, Gax, and Poog are nearing the end of their mission. But first they have to scale the Great Wall of Trudd. Like the Great Wall of China only bigger, the Great Wall of Trudd stretches across the landscape -- there's no way around it, under it, or through it. So Akiko and the gang will just have to find a way to go over it! But the Great Wall is just one of the many strange obstacles in their path that Akiko must overcome if she's finally to rescue Prince Froptoppit.

Akiko's always prepared for something out of this world, but when she goes on a pleasure trip to Gollarondo with Poog, Mr. Beeba, Spuckler Boach, and Gax she can barely believe her eyes--Gollarondo is a city that was built completely upside down! Forget sight-seeing. All Akiko wants to do is keep both feet on the ground. Which is not so easy. Almost as soon as the gang arrives Spuckler's robot Gax accidentally flies off one of Gollarondo's balconies and into the Moonguzzit Sea below. Good news: He survived the fall. Bad news: Anything and everything that falls from Gollarondo is automatically the property of Nugg von Hoffelhiff--the ruler of the seas beneath the city. By the time Akiko and her crew are able to gain an audience with Nugg, he has sold Gax to others. What's worse, he actually broke Gax down into spare parts to maximize his profits! It's up to Akiko and the gang to retrieve the pieces of Gax before they are spread far and wide across the Moonguzzit Sea. But the people who bought the parts run the gamut from off the wall to downright villainous, so saving Gax's neck (and body and wheels) may turn out to be Akiko's most dangerous mission yet.

In this companion novel to Akiko on the Planet Smoo, fourth-grade earthling Akiko and her odd team are on a journey to save the kidnapped Prince Froptoppit from the evil Alia Rellapor. Unfortunately, on their way to Alia Rellapor's castle, the group has gotten lost while sailing over the Moonguzzit Sea in their flying boat. With no maps available, the team's best hope is to find Queen Pwip of the Sprubly Islands, a clairvoyant, who will be able to point them in the right direction. But the Sprubly Islands aren't like Akiko's hometown, and when Spuckler and Mr. Beeba disappear one night, Akiko is left to decide how she is to survive in this strange new world.