Jakeman's Marvellous Mechanimals and the Space Pirates by Nick Ward
Will Jakeman is the inventor of the world-famous Marvellous Mechanimals - brilliant mechanical animals that defend people from all the dangerous creatures that inhabited their home. At the ripe old age of 99 and three quarters, Will decides he must try to discover the whereabouts of Ureker, the lost planet of his birth invaded by Reptoids, a gang of merciless Space Pirates, when he was still a little baby. Will builds a giant telescope that can see far out into the cosmos - but what he doesn't realise is that his fiddling with the fabric of the cosmos causes a massive space-quake, and a ten-year-old boy called Charlie Small is catapulted through the hole and lands near Will's factory of inventions. The two embark on a series of adventures trying to get Charlie home - will they succeed or will they be left dangling in space forever?