Lenny Lemmon and the Alien Invasion

Ben Davis's Lenny Lemmon and the Alien Invasion is a very silly story for 6 year olds about a boy who fakes a UFO crash to save his grandma's ice cream parlour.

What happens

Lenny is BORED. It's the school holidays, his best friends are away and his dad's latest invention, a flying bike made out of Lenny's own bike, has just dumped Dad in a neighbour's flowerbed.

Then Grandma tells him nobody comes into her shop any more. Everyone goes to the giant new EnormoMall instead, and if it carries on she'll have to close. His friend Sam's family bookshop is struggling too.

So Lenny has one of his ideas. If a spaceship crash put a tiny American town on the map, why not theirs? He and a very nervous Sam wheel barrowloads of Dad's broken inventions into the woods at night and build a crash site.

It works far too well. The town fills up with tourists and TV crews, and the queue for Grandma's shop reaches the door. And Sir Percival Hickenbottom, who runs the EnormoMall, says he'll eat his hat if anyone finds a real alien.

Lenny narrates, and he never stops. There are lots of big CAPITAL words, jokes about bums and badgers, and a store detective who insists on being called J-Dog. Sam is the perfect sidekick, begging "Lenny, NO" at every plan.

There's a proper chase round the shopping centre, on a floor covered in free cocktail sausages, and a twist they won't see coming.

One thing to think about. Lenny's plan is basically a big fib to the whole town, and he borrows his mum's phone without asking to make the videos. The book doesn't pretend it's a good idea (Sam spends most of it trying to talk him out of it). It's a nice one to chat about afterwards.

If your reader loves a kid whose schemes always go further than planned, they'll get on with Lenny straight away.

What to read next

Lenny and Sam have been in trouble before. For the day Lenny took a secret in a box to Olden Days school, try Lenny Lemmon and the Invincible Rat.