Month: April 2015

 

Here's a compilation of the really nice things people are saying about ALIEN INVASION IN MY BACKYARD: AN EMU CLUB ADVENTURE.

 

I really appreciate them all, and I'm especially thankful to Lincoln Peirce, Cory Doctorow, Adam Rex and Elliott Kalan, who read the book well before it came out and liked it enough, and were kind enough, to provide these quotes.

 

"…The type of non-stop action and improbably hilarious fun that only a kid could dream up. … The EMU Club’s adventures perfectly capture the intersection of imagination and wonder – the crossroad that’s so often found in cardboard boxes, pillow forts, and backyards everywhere."

–GeekDad (added 4/15)

 

"Ruben Bolling’s out-of-this-world sci-fi book — about three kids who start a mystery club in their neighborhood — is a favorite among Jennifer Garner and Gwen Stefani’s broods."
–US Weekly (added 5/20)

 

"Cool Book … Get your tweens excited about reading with this fun new book"

–New York Family Magazine (added 8/2)

PLUS:  

"Ruben Bolling's New Kids' Book Extracts Magic From The Mundane"

–New York Family Magazine (an article about Ruben Bolling and the EMU Club Adventure series, added 8/16).

 

"Library Pick:  Readers will laugh their way through this first 'Emu Club' adventure and perhaps begin their own summer club."

–Statesman Journal (added 8/16)

 

“Filled with wild twists and funny dialogue, this suburban/intergalactic adventure bodes well for later installments.”   

–Publishers Weekly

 

“Spectacular” “Mind-blowing”

–Kirkus Reviews (full review contains major spoilers)

 

“There's no mystery—the EMU Club is a hit! This is a fun, funny adventure that kids will love to read. ”

-Lincoln Peirce, author of Big Nate

 

"The EMU Club inhabits exactly the world I always hoped to live in when I was 12, when the answer to questions like 'Where did I put my toy' led inevitably to alien conspiracies and secret underground tunnels. A book for the curious and adventurous!"

-Cory Doctorow, author of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Little Brother

 

"An adventure so funny you’ll think it couldn’t be true–but if it isn’t true, then where did all those realistic-looking photographs come from? You’d better read this so you’ll know what to do when the world ends."

–Adam Rex, author of The True Meaning of Smekday

"The funniest book about unbelievable kid mystery exploring I've ever read. The only real mystery is why you aren't reading this book RIGHT NOW!"

–Elliott Kalan, Famous TV Writer

 

“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.”

-Ben, age 9, A Boy’s Books (full review contains major spoilers)

 

“Written as a comic book/case book, this promises to be an absolutely wonderful series of stories for the elementary crowd if this first installment is any indication. I would strongly recommend this for second through fourth graders.  Five out of five stars! ”

-Ben Langhinrichs, Big Comfy Chair

 

"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!"

–Splashes Into Books

My buddy Tom Tomorrow sent me this picture of ALIEN INVASION IN MY BACKYARD in a Connecticut Barnes & Noble, so… I guess the book is OUT!

 

On GoodReads, a former primary school teacher has this to say about what she calls "a brilliant story that will really appeal to early readers of chaptered books":

 

"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."

 

This is the kind of review that can ruin me as a kids' author.  Alien Invasion in My Backyard is a story about robots, aliens, Earth-saving heroics, and spelunking!  If kids knew a teacher thought it could be used constructively and enjoyably in the classroom, they'd push it to the side of the plate like so much steamed broccoli.

 

So, educators:  I'm glad if you enjoy the book, and thrilled if you think you can use it to help kids learn.  And please spread the word.  But if any kids catch you with this information, DENY EVERYTHING.

 

For years, I knew that there was someone meticulously cataloging every online Tom the Dancing Bug comic, starting when it first appeared on Salon.com in 1995, collecting links on a simple page he called "Tom the Dancing Bug:  The Complete Archive Listing."

 

Well, that now-defunct page just happened to come up today in a Google search, but this time the search result attached the page's author's name to the result, and that name leaped out at me:  Aaron Swartz.  

 

This is the young man who was a programmer/hacker/activist prodigy and the subject of the documentary "The Internet's Own Boy."  He committed suicide in 2013, in the midst of a criminal prosecution for systematically downloading academic journal articles.

 

When he died, I recognized the name in articles about him from a few Twitter exchanges we'd had, and the fact that he was a member of the INNER HIVE. I realized who my internet acquaintance was, what he had accomplished, and tragically, how he died.  

 

But until this moment, I had no idea just what a devoted reader of Tom the Dancing Bug he was.

 

I'm saddened all over again.  I wish I had met him.