Posted on by TracyC

Aliens for Dinner

Aliens for Dinner by Stephanie Spinner and Jonathan Etra, 1994.

This book is part of the Aliens for Breakfast Trilogy, a short, easy chapter book series for elementary school children.

Richard Bickerstaff is unhappy because his mother has started dating a man named Bob Baxter. Richard thinks that Bob is weird, and he has an annoying habit of repeating himself. Then, one evening, when Bob is having dinner with Richard and his mother, Richard’s small alien friend, Aric, arrives with their Chinese food, hidden in a large fortune cookie. Aric is a commander of the Interspace Brigade, and they operate on a shoestring budget, so they often transport Aric in some form of food to save money.

Richard manages to slip away from his mother and Bob and takes Aric to his room, where Aric tells him about his latest mission. Earth is in danger from aliens from a planet called Dwilb. Dwilbs have a bizarre love of pollution, and pollution problems have gotten bad enough on Earth to attract their interest. The Dwilbs want to make Earth even more polluted so they can turn it into a pollution-themed amusement park for themselves called Toxic Waste Funland. Aric says that they’re so confident in their plan that they’re already running advertisements. Aric will need Richard’s help to stop them!

Richard asks Aric questions about what the Dwilbs are like. Aric says that they look like humans, but they have an odd habit of saying everything twice, and the repetition seems to have a hypnotic effect. Richard thinks that sounds familiar, and he remembers why when his mother and Bob come to say goodnight to him. Bob repeats himself! Richard starts to think that his mom might be dating an alien!

Meanwhile, the Dwilbs have caused a major oil spill nearby as part of their plan to pollute the planet further. Local people have been trying to help with the cleanup, but it seems like it’s just getting worse. Richard goes to take a look and sees Dwilbs splashing about in the oil, having fun! They love the oil spill, the exhaust from cars, and everything that’s dirty.

Richard asks Aric what they can do to stop the Dwilbs, but as often happens when Aric travels in the bizarre ways that Interspace Brigade sends him, has trouble remembering the Dwilbs’ weak point. While Aric struggles to remember, the Dwilbs start influencing the kids at Richard’s school, getting them hooked on a treat they call Sludgies. Under their influence, the kids start littering and stop caring about the environmental efforts their teacher is trying to talk to them about. Even Richard’s friend, Henry, is under their power and in no state of mind to help Richard.

Fortunately, there is a secret weapon right there at Richard’s school: the school principal and his ability to bore everyone almost to death. In the case of the Dwilbs, boredom is a serious threat!

My Reaction and Spoilers

The books in the Aliens for Breakfast Trilogy are humorous sci-fi stories, and the solutions to defeating the aliens always have some comic twist. The solution in this case is getting the school’s principal to speak to them and bore them out of their minds. Richard has to arrange for his principal to speak at a place where he knows all the aliens will hear him.

Richard has run into situations in previous books where strange people he knows turn out to be sinister aliens in disguise, and in this case, he thinks that Bob is one of the Dwilbs. However, there is a twist to this story. Bob isn’t one of the aliens. He’s a little odd, but he’s a human. His quirks just happen to resemble the Dwilbs. He has a habit of repeating himself, but he’s not at all bored by the way the principal speaks or the way Richard speaks when he imitates his principal. Bob is often a little boring himself. By the end of the book, Richard feels better about Bob when he discovers that Bob likes comic books as much as he does. The two of them start bonding by sharing comics. Bob has a collection of older comics that Richard has been wanting to read, and he lets Richard borrow them.

I like the references in the story to real franchises that fans of science fiction and comic books would know. Richard has a collection of X-Men comics.

The book was published in the 1990s, when I was still in school. I remember my teachers talking to us about environmental issues back them, especially about pollution and the importance of recycling. They often urged us to get involved and do our part to recycle and not litter. The environmental messages in this story, especially the ones Richard hears at school, bring back memories for me.

Posted on by TracyC

Aliens for Lunch

Aliens for Lunch cover

Aliens for Lunch by Stephanie Spinner and Jonathan Etra, 1988.

This book is part of the Aliens for Breakfast Trilogy, a short, easy chapter book series for elementary school children.

It’s spring break, and Richard and his friend Henry are bored. It seems like all of their friends have all gone somewhere for vacation, but they’re stuck at home. Richard’s mother leaves the boys home alone, telling them that there’s food for lunch in the refrigerator and a new sample of popcorn that arrived in the mail. The last time that a sample of a new kind of food arrived in the mail, Richard’s alien friend, Aric was hiding inside, and the same is true this time, too! Aric is back, and he needs Richard’s help!

Aric tells Richard and Henry that a valuable shipment of XTC-1000 was hijacked by aliens called the Graxians. XTC-1000 is the secret substance that makes all desserts taste wonderful. (I always thought that was sugar, but okay.) Aric’s planet ships XTC-1000 to other planets, and each shipment is supposed to last for thousands of years, but the Graxians are greedy, and they used up their supply too quickly, which is why they hijacked a shipment bound for another planet. It’s a real problem because, if that other planet’s desserts suddenly turn bland because they’ve run out of XTC-1000, they’re bound to start raiding desserts from other planets, like Earth.

Aric’s Interspace Brigade was supposed to send weapons to help Aric and Richard face off against the Graxians, but as always, they’re on a strict budget, and the weapons they sent somehow failed to arrive. Richard and Henry do the best they can to improvise weapons with things they find in Richard’s kitchen, but they’re not very terrifying. The Graxians take Aric, Richard, and Henry prisoner after they board the ship. Can the boys manage to free Aric and discover what they need to subdue the Graxians?

My Reaction

I don’t think I read this book as a kid, although I remember reading the first book in the series. The Aliens for Breakfast Trilogy is a short series of funny science fiction stories as Richard and his alien friend do battle against the villains of the galaxy with food! I like the fact that even the aliens they fight find their efforts laughable when they try to use things that just don’t make sense, like when they try to use the kitchen gadgets as weapons. I also enjoyed the pun that the secret substance that makes desserts good is “XTC”-1000. (No, I don’t think they mean the illegal drug.) There is also a running gag that Aric’s space organization is always operating on a shoestring budget, which is why they often have to improvise weapons and modes of travel. The stakes are high but laughable at the time time, and somehow, they always manage to save the day! There is an extra joke at the end of this book where Aric gives both of the boys jackets from his space organization, telling them that girls find them irresistible. When the boys try wearing them for the first time, they come to the conclusion that neither one of them is ready to be irresistible.

Posted on by TracyC

Aliens for Breakfast

Aliens for Breakfast by Stephanie Spinner and Jonathan Etra, 1988.

This is the first book in the Aliens for Breakfast Trilogy, a short, easy chapter book series for elementary school children.

There’s a new student in Richard Bickerstaff’s class at school called Dorf. In spite of his strange name, Dorf is a good-looking blond boy with an irresistible smile. Everyone in class admires him and imitates him. Even Richard finds himself admiring Dorf’s clothes and wishing that he could wear the same thing, even his stupid bowling shirt. Then, when Richard sits down to breakfast one morning before school, he learns something startling about Dorf that changes everything.

Richard’s mother gives him a sample of Alien Crisp that came in the mail. She thinks that Richard will love it because of his love of science fiction, but right away, he can tell that this is no ordinary cereal. When he pours milk on the cereal, it comes to life! Actually, he has revived a small alien called Aric, who was sent to Earth from another planet in freeze-dried form in the cereal. Aric is a Commander of the Interspace Brigade, and he’s here to stop an alien invasion on Earth. His target is Dorf.

Dorf is no ordinary boy. He’s an alien in disguise and a dangerous one. His type of alien multiplies, and if that happens, Earth is doomed! There’s only one thing that can stop Dorf … and Aric has forgotten what it is. Being freeze-dried for the trip to Earth has scrambled his memory, but he knows that the weapon they need is an ordinary type of food from Earth.

While Aric struggles to remember what that secret weapon is, Dorf’s hold over Richard’s friends and teachers becomes stronger. Everyone is charmed by Dorft, and everyone wants to do whatever Dorf does. Only Richard resists, and that identifies him to Dorf as an enemy.

Dorf uses his powers to make Richard start dissolving. If Aric doesn’t remember that secret weapon soon, both Richard and Earth are history!

My Reaction

I remember reading this when I was in elementary school, although I forgot most of the story. I remembered the alien arriving in the cereal box, like those little toys we used to get in cereal as kids. I also remembered that he was under threat somehow and that Aric told him that he hoped he didn’t have big plans for the weekend, with the implication that, if they don’t do something, he won’t make it to the weekend.

There’s a lot of humor in the story. I was alarmed at how Richard’s fingertips start bleeding when the dissolving begins. That part sounds a little scary. He bleeds rather than starting to fade out, and I had forgotten about that part in the story. However, there is humor in the story that helps to soften it, and the solution is a simple one that works right away.

The story has some references to real life science fiction, like Yoda from Star Wars and the starship Enterprise from Star Trek.

Posted on by TracyC

A Watcher in the Woods

A Watcher in the Woods by Florence Engel Randall, 1976.

The Carstairs family is moving from Ohio to a small town in Massachusetts because Professor Carstairs will be taking a new job as head of the English department at the local college. Fifteen-year-old Jan knows that she will find the move harder than her parents or her younger sister. Her father will be busy with his work, and her mother will make friends with the wives of other faculty at the college. Jan knows that her little sister, Ellie, is still very young and in elementary school, and she won’t find changing schools as difficult as she will. Jan isn’t looking forward to trying to fit in at the local high school.

The family’s first difficulty in moving is finding a house in this new town that they like. Because it’s a small town, their options are limited, and it seems like there’s something wrong with each of the houses they see. Then, their realtor suggests that they view the old Aylwood place outside of town. Living there would mean a longer distance to drive to the college and the girls’ schools, but it’s a nice, big house with some land attached to it. The land includes woods and a pond. Elderly Mrs. Aylwood can’t afford to maintain the place anymore, but she has been reluctant to sell the house. She is very attached to it and she wants to make sure that, if she sells, that she will sell it to the right kind of people, who will take care of the land and woods.

From the first time that Jan and her family visit the house, it gives Jan a strange feeling. She has the oddest feeling that someone (or something) is watching them from the woods, and it frightens her. However, when she tries to explain her uneasy feelings to her mother, her mother thinks that it’s her imagination. Jan can’t deny that the house and wood give her the feeling of a fairy tale and that Mrs. Aylwood reminds her of a fairy tale witch.

For some reason, Mrs. Aylwood becomes more welcoming to the Carstairs family after she sees Jan, and she begins asking Jan some rather odd questions about herself. Mrs. Aylwood admits that Jan reminds her of her own daughter, Karen, who she lost 50 years ago when she was only 15 years old. Jan begins to understand that Mrs. Aylwood’s attachment to the house is because it’s a link to her daughter’s memory, but she soon begins to realize that there’s more to it than that. Mrs. Aylwood asks Jan what kind of person she is and makes a cryptic comment about how Jan is a human but there are other things besides humans.

Jan’s uneasy feeling of being watched continues, and mirrors in the house are inexplicably broken in an x-shaped pattern. When she befriends a neighbor, Mark, and talks to him and his mother about the house, she learns that Karen did not die but that she disappeared 50 years ago. She apparently went out for a walk to the pond in the woods one summer morning and simply vanished with no explanation. Searches for her never lead anywhere. Most of the local people believe that Karen ran away from home, although it would have been out of character for her to do that. Jan begins to wonder if the watcher she senses in the woods could be Karen, somehow hiding out or having returned after all these years, although Mark says that doesn’t make sense. Then, remembering Mrs. Aylwood’s comment about things that aren’t human, Jan wonders if the watcher could be Karen’s ghost. What if she died all those years ago, and her spirit haunts the woods?

It seems like someone or something is communicating with Ellie. Ellie seems to hear something speaking or humming when Jan can’t. Something even suggests to Ellie that she name her new puppy Nerak, which Jan realizes is “Karen” spelled backwards. Is Karen trying to communicate with them, or is it something else?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. This book has been made into movie versions twice, but the Disney movie from 1980 is more faithful to the original story. I’ll explain why below, but it involves spoilers.

My Reaction and Spoilers

When talking about my opinion of this book, I really need to include some spoilers. This is a very unusual book because it isn’t obvious until about halfway through what kind of story it really is. From the beginning, it’s set up like a ghost story, with Karen’s mysterious disappearance, the sense of something watching the house and family from the woods, and something trying to communicate through Ellie. It’s very suspenseful and mysterious, but this is not actually a ghost story. It’s really science fiction.

Karen isn’t dead, but she has been trapped in an alternate dimension since she disappeared 50 years ago. A being from that other dimension has also been trapped in our world since then. This other being is the mysterious watcher in the woods. Jan correctly senses that this other being is also female and a child, although beings of its kind live extraordinarily long lives because time works differently in their dimension. What has been 50 years for everyone else has only seemed like a day to her. She wants to return home, but she has had to wait for conditions to be right. She also wants to help Karen, and she has been struggling to communicate with Mrs. Aylwood and Jan and her sister so she can tell them what they need to do.

In the Disney movie, there are a couple of major changes from the original book. The first is that the location is changed from the US to England, although Jan and her family are Americans. It also features a kind of initiation ritual that Jan was undergoing just as her switch with the creature from the other dimension happened, adding an element that seems supernatural, although it is still science fiction. At the very end of the Disney movie, Jan brings Karen back from the other dimension, but in the book (Spoiler!) Mrs. Aylwood goes to join Karen in the other dimension instead.

In the book, Jan’s mother worries about what life would be like for Karen if she returns, aged 50 years in what must have seemed like only a day, having lost most of her life, or what it would be like if she has not changed at all but her mother has aged 50 years, and the world has been through so many major changes since she left. It isn’t clear whether or not Karen has aged in the other dimension, but Jan’s mother’s point is that the world she came from has definitely changed. Karen can’t go back to her old life, and there is some sadness about that and about what Mrs. Aylwood has been going through since Karen disappeared. However, Mrs. Aylwood decides to join Karen in this other world, where she’s been. We don’t really know what Karen’s condition is in the other dimension because we don’t see her. She may have aged very fast there, although I think they imply that she has not aged at all because time works differently in the other dimension. Since time works differently there, it seems like they either won’t age further there or will do so much more slowly than they would on Earth.

Between the two movie versions, the Disney movie version of this book from 1980 is more faithful to the original story because it maintains the concept that this is a science fiction story and that the watcher in the woods is a being from another dimension. The movie version from 2017 turns the story into a ghost story with no science fiction elements. In the ghost story version, Karen is also still alive and hasn’t aged after being gone for many years, but the watcher in the woods is a ghost who is holding her captive. It’s a spookier version, but I think the logic of the original book, with its science fiction theme, makes more sense. 

The premise of the ghost story didn’t make as much sense to me because the ghost’s motives seem confused. First, the ghost takes Karen captive because she was staging a stunt for some friends where she appeared to be mocking the way he died. Then, he seemed to want to keep a girl for company, which is weird because it doesn’t seem like he interacts with Karen while he has her. He tries to make a bargain where he would be willing to release Karen in exchange for Ellie, but in the end, it turns out that human company isn’t really what he wants. (Spoiler!) He wants a ritual for his death that he was deprived from having when he was killed. The story just seemed to be all over the place with the ghost’s motives and desires. Is he out to punish Karen for her disrespect, lonely without human company, or just trying to get attention from the living to fulfill his final wishes? Even he doesn’t seem clear about that, which is why I prefer the sci-fi version. 

I also thought that the premise of the sci-fi story was more original, and I enjoyed the twist of a story that seems like a ghost story but really isn’t. If any sufficiently advanced technology might look like magic to someone who had never seen it before, as Arthur C. Clarke said, it makes sense that any being who was sufficiently different from the human experience might appear to be some kind of supernatural creature to human beings who didn’t know what they were perceiving.

The Disney version from 1980 actually has multiple endings because the first endings they filmed didn’t quite work and didn’t get a good reaction from audiences. If you’re curious about what the three endings are like, Jess Lambert explains them in her YouTube review of the movie.