Mid-90's sci-fi series with a girl who finds her brother trapped in an alien zoo

Question

There was a book (series?) that one of my teachers was reading to the class when I was in school (I want to say around grade 4) back in the mid 90's. It's killing me that I cannot remember the name of it.

I do not remember much about the story, but hoping what I do remember can give some clues.

I remember the story involved a brother and a sister, and some form of space travel not involving spaceships. From what I recall the brother and sister accidentally traveled through space, and got separated. Then my memory blurs, but sometime after that the girl character is touring what is essentially an alien "zoo", where she finds her brother is one of the "exhibits". Some of the dialog I remember, is the alien tour guide was describing her brother (though she did not tell these aliens they were related), and how they had incredible difficulty in trying to create a habitat for this "creature" (the brother), but they were very surprised when the brother created his own habitat (he constructed some sort of house or hut). I believe there was a quote similar to

"It built it by itself!"

or similar.

Other than that, I don't really remember except that I think this story was part of a series, and that the main premise of the story was the kids trying to find their way home.

Answer 1

Space Trap (1983) By Monica Hughes, maybe?

Basic summary:

When twelve-year-old Valerie and her brother and sister fall through a space trap and are transmitted to an alien planet as zoo specimens, they seek ways to return to their home in the thirty-second century.

Slightly more detail:

It’s a straightforward enough story. Valerie is fed up babysitting her sister Susie on the rather bare planet her parents are studying, and resentful that her big brother gets to go with her father. She persuades her mother to ask her brother to do the babysitting, but her father doesn’t ask her to go with him as she had hoped, so she is left at a loose end. When her brother and sister find a thorn bush maze she follows them in and wakes up as a prisoner on an alien planet. The humans are just one of many species that the aliens capture and display in zoos, take home as pets or dissect. Valerie is lucky in that her scientist owner is a psychologist and linguist.

Most of the story is about Valerie’s escape, her rescue of her brother from a zoo and her sister from pet-dom, and how she joins up with others to find a way home.

Looks like a standalone book.