Alien Invasion in My Backyard

Gets the Recipe Just Right

What do you get with an early-reader chapter-book neighborhood-kids adventure book? Usually they include at least these ingredients: clueless parents, annoying sibling, loyal pet, jerky friend, good friend, super-smart friend, quirky friend, bully, aliens or robbers, wildly nutty plot, even nuttier resolution.

The secret isn't in the list of ingredients. It's in how you mix them together and season them. To my mind, this book is a very tasty offering. Here's why.

This neighborhood team of adventurer/heroes consists of our narrator, his slightly obsessive best friend/neighbor, his little sister, and his dog. Contemplating a long summer, they have formed an Exploration Mystery Unbelievable Club, (each kid got to add one word to the name). Now they just need to explore an unbelievable mystery. Which presents itself soon enough in the form of an alien invasion.

Here's the good part. The narrator has a slightly clueless but energetic voice. He's delusional, world-weary, sometimes exasperated, and a little bit of a know-it-all in all of the ways a kid can be. But, the author soft-pedals all of this so that the kid/narrator's personality and attitude is never set up as the heart of the story. The narrator isn't bossy; he's presenting a report, with a lot of antic side comment, on what happened in the backyard. Along the same lines, the little sister is represented as being annoying, but she's actually a solid contributor. So she isn't over-the-top. Ditto for the neighbor best friend, who pulls his weight in the story and isn't overloaded with quirks. (The kids, basically, seem to like each other.)

As a bonus, there isn't a lot of snarky dismissiveness about the parents, who are actually presented as perfectly reasonable characters. I get tired of books that go too far in banging on mean, clueless, lazy or idiot parents. Where's the fun in that? And there is not a single bully, so we don't have that overworn cliche bunging up the works.

The upshot is that these are fun kids to hang out with, they have a crazy adventure, there are some nice twists and turns and a few funny lines, and we all get home in time for dinner. This struck me as a nice choice.

A final word of interest. I first read this in black and white on a Kindle, and the illustrations hadn't been laid in yet. The book struck me as generally O.K.. I then downloaded the book in my Adobe Reader and read it again in its intended final format, with full color illustrations, varied fonts, and creative layout changes. That added a remarkable amount of additional appeal to the book. This is one of those cases in which the illustrations really enhance the storytelling and really help the young reader get into and follow, and enjoy, the story. So, it seems to me that if you are going to download this make sure it is on to a device that properly displays the intended layout. Just saying.

Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book in exchange for a candid review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.

Want to find out how Stuart, Brian, Violet and Ferdinand managed to defeat an invading alien race, look no further, this book contains the official report from the President of the EMU Club all about it! Mind you, if you aren’t a member of the Club the first part warns that you really shouldn’t be reading it . . . . all the more reason to do so! It. like me, you ignore the warnings you’ll be introduced to the four EMU Club members, complete with pictures of them, making you aware of their name, age, role, expertise and career goal. Stuart is the eleven year old narrator for most of the story and the other members of the Club are his best friend, Brian, his younger sister, Violet, and their dog, Ferdinand. Having given a brief history of how the Club was formed and named it then continues to inform readers about their first mystery and their battle to defeat the aliens!

This is a brilliant story that will really appeal to early readers of chaptered books. Stuart has a camera and this is supposedly used to take colourful snapshots of events throughout the story (most taken by Violet). These really enhance the enjoyment of the story and are likely to increase the appeal and understanding of the story to early readers. The font used is more like printed handwriting, very appropriate as a child is supposed to have written the report, and children will also enjoy this.

The story has lots of unexpected twists and turns in it, taking the reader on a roller coaster adventure that still manages to finish in time for everyone to get home in time for dinner. A great story that has made me want to read further works from this author!

As a teacher, I could easily have used this story to help children explore relationships, to decide on an alternative alien invading force and how to counteract them, to rewrite specific sections from an alternative viewpoint (e.g. that of the aliens or Ferdinand) . . . . etc. Lots of potential activities from a brilliant story that children will enjoy reading independently without any of these activities!

The EMU club's adventures were enjoyable to read by not only me but by my young nieces. Any young reader looking for adventure and surprising twits should read this book.

t

This book is about a boy named Stuart, his friend Brian, and his little sister Violet. They find out that their dog is a robot sending messages to aliens that the Earth has not been destroyed, but his computer is broken. The aliens come and the kids have to protect Earth from the aliens, but the aliens look like cats. Then the war starts!

I thought this book was really funny and cool that the aliens were cats. My favorite part was when they used water guns to fight the alien cats. I liked that the dog was a robot but he risked his life to save Stuart. I think kids who like funny adventure stories would really like this book. I am really excited that it is a series and there will be another book.

The book is the first adventure of the EMU-Club and it's told by 11 year old Stuart Tennemeier, who is the President of the club.
EMU stands for Exploration-Mystery-Unbelievable and the name was created by the three human members, Stuart, his younger sister Violet and his best friend Brian (Stuart's dog Ferdinand is completing the group as fourth member).
The EMU-Club was founded on a Saturday when they didn't know what to do and felt terribly bored and Stuart came up with the idea, to look for big mysteries and to try and solve them.

The story is written as if you're reading the groups official report of their first mission, narrated by Stuart and wonderfully enhanced by illustrations, which are presented as photos taken by Violet during their adventure.

The four very quickly realise, that they don't come across any big mysteries to solve and decide to concentrate on something smaller, like Stuart's missing game controller.
But the small mystery leads to something much bigger and soon they are facing an alien invasion and the aliens are quite an interesting species indeed. And how they try to fight them is complete fun and actually quite logical.
Will the quartet save the planet?

The idea of the story isn't new, but the way in which Ruben Bolling mixes the ingredients, (brainy best friend, unnerving sister, loyal pet, aliens and robots), it's just refreshing to read and a lot of fun. What I particularly liked about it, is that it encourages children to look for the small mysteries in their surrounds, the everyday adventures, as they might turn out as much fun as the big superhero stuff, maybe even more.

The book is a quick read, with short chapters and a font in handwriting-style and it will easily appeal to children who start to read their first smaller books and it's a brilliant one to encourage reluctant readers to give it a try.

If the EMU-Club continues like this, it has the potential to be a hit.
Or to say it like Stuart: it's spelunkingly good.

I enjoyed the book and so did my son. Will look for other books from Bolling. Thank you.