Second paragraph of third chapter of George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt:

'Don't worry!' said George's dad. 'I'll keep an eye on the house for you. Might tidy up the garden a bit.' He gave Eric a firm handshake, which made the scientist turn rather pale and rub his hand afterwards.

Second paragraph of third chapter of George and the Big Bang:

The two friends stared blankly at him.

These books follow on from George's Secret Key to the Universe; they too are almost entirely by Lucy Hawking, with a few inserted pieces on science by her father Stephen Hawking and various other well-known scientists. To be honest I wasn't all that impressed with the stories, which in both cases take George and friends by convenient plot device to a number of educational settings to have adventures; Annie, the kick-ass heroine of the first book, gets rather sidelined here for other young male characters, and the means and motivation of the bad guys are not very clear or consistent. But the illustrations by Garry Parsons are jolly, and both books have a lot of beautiful astronomical photographs which are almost worth the price themselves.

George's Cosmic Treasure Hunt made it to the top of my pile of unread books acquired in 2009, and next in that list is The Secret History of Science Fiction, ed. James Patrick Kelly. I thought I would read George and the Big Bang while I was at it.