Help! I’m An Alien by Jo Franklin
Jun. 21st, 2016 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
”I have nothing in common with my family!”
Daniel Kendall is different – different to the other Kendalls anyway. After all, he’s the only one with brown hair and brown eyes, and what’s more, he’s taller than his family, his friends and probably everyone else in the entire world.
Big sister Jessie has made it clear just how different Daniel is, by explaining that he is in fact, an alien, kindly adopted by her parents. Confused, Daniel turns to his two friends, Freddo and Gordon the Geek, for help to return to his home planet. But when things don’t go according to plan Daniel has to decide whether he is an alien or a human after all.
10-year-old Daniel Kendall has nothing in common with the rest of his family. For starters, he’s much taller than everyone else – even his dad – plus he’s got brown hair and brown eyes when everyone else has blond hair and blue eyes. When his older sister, Jessie, explains to him that the reason he’s so different is because he is an alien who was abandoned on Earth and adopted by the Kendalls, it makes complete sense. With the help of his two best friends, Gordon the Geek and Freddo the Fartmaster, he works out that he’s actually from Keppler 22b and he needs to get back to his people where he might actually be accepted. But interstellar space travel isn’t easy to organise when you’re 10 and the closer Daniel gets to travelling home, the harder he finds it to say goodbye …
Jo Franklin’s debut book for children aged 8+ is a warm and funny story that will appeal to any child who feels like they don’t belong and the illustrations by Aaron Blecha do a great job of drawing out the humour. Daniel is a likeable character – gawkily tall, enduring a meaner older sister and certain that his best friends aren’t cool (and yet desperate to keep them) – it’s easy to understand why he so readily believes Jessie’s claim that he’s an alien and Franklin does well at showing his point of view (especially as the facts point to something being wrong). I also enjoyed the depictions of Freddo (who comes from a colourful family of market traders that I hope to see more of in future books) and Gordon (who has OCD, loves his laptop and is tight with his money), both of whom support Daniel in their own way while also having their own issues to worry about. There are some great set-piece comedy scenes (my favourite being a meeting in a kiddie’s wendy house but closely followed by an escapade with a home satellite dish and experiments in cryogenic stasis) and Franklin packs a lot of plot into what’s actually quite a short book. There are two sequels planned for this and I will definitely be checking out what Daniel and his friends get up to next.
The Verdict:
Jo Franklin’s debut book for children aged 8+ is a warm and funny story that will appeal to any child who feels like they don’t belong and the illustrations by Aaron Blecha do a great job of drawing out the humour. Daniel is a likeable character – gawkily tall, enduring a meaner older sister and certain that his best friends aren’t cool (and yet desperate to keep them) – it’s easy to understand why he so readily believes Jessie’s claim that he’s an alien and Franklin does well at showing his point of view (especially as the facts point to something being wrong). I also enjoyed the depictions of Freddo (who comes from a colourful family of market traders that I hope to see more of in future books) and Gordon (who has OCD, loves his laptop and is tight with his money), both of whom support Daniel in their own way while also having their own issues to worry about. There are some great set-piece comedy scenes (my favourite being a meeting in a kiddie’s wendy house but closely followed by an escapade with a home satellite dish and experiments in cryogenic stasis) and Franklin packs a lot of plot into what’s actually quite a short book. There are two sequels planned for this and I will definitely be checking out what Daniel and his friends get up to next.
Daniel Kendall is different – different to the other Kendalls anyway. After all, he’s the only one with brown hair and brown eyes, and what’s more, he’s taller than his family, his friends and probably everyone else in the entire world.
Big sister Jessie has made it clear just how different Daniel is, by explaining that he is in fact, an alien, kindly adopted by her parents. Confused, Daniel turns to his two friends, Freddo and Gordon the Geek, for help to return to his home planet. But when things don’t go according to plan Daniel has to decide whether he is an alien or a human after all.
10-year-old Daniel Kendall has nothing in common with the rest of his family. For starters, he’s much taller than everyone else – even his dad – plus he’s got brown hair and brown eyes when everyone else has blond hair and blue eyes. When his older sister, Jessie, explains to him that the reason he’s so different is because he is an alien who was abandoned on Earth and adopted by the Kendalls, it makes complete sense. With the help of his two best friends, Gordon the Geek and Freddo the Fartmaster, he works out that he’s actually from Keppler 22b and he needs to get back to his people where he might actually be accepted. But interstellar space travel isn’t easy to organise when you’re 10 and the closer Daniel gets to travelling home, the harder he finds it to say goodbye …
Jo Franklin’s debut book for children aged 8+ is a warm and funny story that will appeal to any child who feels like they don’t belong and the illustrations by Aaron Blecha do a great job of drawing out the humour. Daniel is a likeable character – gawkily tall, enduring a meaner older sister and certain that his best friends aren’t cool (and yet desperate to keep them) – it’s easy to understand why he so readily believes Jessie’s claim that he’s an alien and Franklin does well at showing his point of view (especially as the facts point to something being wrong). I also enjoyed the depictions of Freddo (who comes from a colourful family of market traders that I hope to see more of in future books) and Gordon (who has OCD, loves his laptop and is tight with his money), both of whom support Daniel in their own way while also having their own issues to worry about. There are some great set-piece comedy scenes (my favourite being a meeting in a kiddie’s wendy house but closely followed by an escapade with a home satellite dish and experiments in cryogenic stasis) and Franklin packs a lot of plot into what’s actually quite a short book. There are two sequels planned for this and I will definitely be checking out what Daniel and his friends get up to next.
The Verdict:
Jo Franklin’s debut book for children aged 8+ is a warm and funny story that will appeal to any child who feels like they don’t belong and the illustrations by Aaron Blecha do a great job of drawing out the humour. Daniel is a likeable character – gawkily tall, enduring a meaner older sister and certain that his best friends aren’t cool (and yet desperate to keep them) – it’s easy to understand why he so readily believes Jessie’s claim that he’s an alien and Franklin does well at showing his point of view (especially as the facts point to something being wrong). I also enjoyed the depictions of Freddo (who comes from a colourful family of market traders that I hope to see more of in future books) and Gordon (who has OCD, loves his laptop and is tight with his money), both of whom support Daniel in their own way while also having their own issues to worry about. There are some great set-piece comedy scenes (my favourite being a meeting in a kiddie’s wendy house but closely followed by an escapade with a home satellite dish and experiments in cryogenic stasis) and Franklin packs a lot of plot into what’s actually quite a short book. There are two sequels planned for this and I will definitely be checking out what Daniel and his friends get up to next.
