I’m Telling You, They’re Aliens!

Jeremy Strong's I'm Telling You, They're Aliens is a funny story for 8 year olds narrated by a boy who worries about absolutely everything.

What happens

Robert worries so much that not worrying worries him.

Corners are the main problem. You never know what is round one. So when he was six he taped a mirror to a bamboo stick and held it out ahead of him all the way to school, checking. It took ages and it drove his mum mad. He is older now and he still uses it when he thinks nobody can see.

His first morning at school he heard the bell for playtime, decided the building was on fire, and had the entire reception class stampeding out of the door. The headteacher had to fetch him down from a tree with a ladder.

They call him Chicken Licken. He counts his friends on one hand with no fingers up.

There are other things. He is Robert Wolfgang Amadeus Smith, because his parents love Mozart, and he is the only boy in his class learning the violin. He quite likes the violin. Everybody else finds it hilarious, and you cannot pretend a violin case is a collapsible mountain bike.

He also checks his horoscope every morning on a CD Rom presented by a giant space turtle, which is how he ended up under his desk during maths waiting for an asteroid that never arrived. Nobody said anything. They are used to him.

Then somebody moves into the empty house opposite. No removal van. Nobody saw them arrive. The boy has ears like satellite dishes and Robert gets ants crawling around inside his bones, which is his reliable sign that something is very wrong.

Here is the trick of it. Robert is a joke to everyone around him, and he is also the one telling you the story, so you spend the whole book knowing exactly how much he minds. It is properly funny and just a little bit sad at the same time.

Something to think about first. Robert has real anxiety and no friends, and the comedy is largely at his expense, especially early on. An anxious reader may find that enormously comforting or a bit close to home, and you probably know already which one yours would be.

What to read next

Got a reader who enjoys a narrator who is CERTAIN about something ridiculous? The Baby Brother From Outer Space does the same trick, with Izzy and her friends working out that a baby visiting their school is using mind control, on the grounds that the office ladies are being suspiciously nice.