OLD-FASHIONED values and modern lifestyle choices meet in this page-turner that should thrill both today's children and the overgrown kids who are their parents.

English teenager Berry Benjamin was raised by her bohemian mother in a travelling mini-bus and given an alternative education, including motorbike lessons and trips to the hip Glastonbury music festival as a child.

When her mother dies of cancer, the 14-year-old realises that life as she has always known it has ended.

But her life changes more drastically than she expects when she is pulled to safety by an old man after she carelessly steps in front of a bus.

A former scientist in New Mexico, he later tells Berry that he needs her to help him return something he took from the wreckage of a crashed UFO many years ago, an item which both neo-Nazis and the American government are eager to get their hands on because of its power.

Though she initially thinks he is crazy, she learns better after he is murdered, and she ends up being pursued by the neo-Nazis.

Carrying the small, weightless package, she flees to the crowds of Glastonbury, where she is befriended by Elle, a cross-dressing, puckish boy.

Together, the friends fly to San Francisco and then make their way to New Mexico on motorbike, finding themselves in a desperate race for their lives.

Voake deftly works in enough cultural references to appeal to media-savvy youths, but what makes the story work in the end are its timeless themes like friendship, justice and responsibility.

If you like this, read:Podkayne Of Mars by Robert Heinlein(1963, $13.52 with GST, Books Kinokuniya). A teenager and her younger brother leave their home planet Mars to visit Earth, but are kidnapped in an interplanetary incident.