Life Hacks for a Little Alien

Franklin’s fresh debut, inspired by her experience with autism, centers on an unnamed girl in southeast England known as Little Alien. She has only one friend, a boy named Bobby who stood up for her once at her previous school. As part of her desire to understand the greater connections between herself and life on Earth, Little Alien latches onto the 15th-century Voynich Manuscript, an indecipherable text believed by some to have been written by extraterrestrials. Hoping to translate it, she delves into the study of linguistics, and she and Bobby sneak off to London to see the manuscript while it’s on loan at a university. Their adventure sends their parents into fits of anxiety, particularly Little Alien’s mother, who suffers a mental breakdown. After she’s institutionalized, Little Alien schemes to break her out. Franklin delightfully renders her neurodivergent protagonist’s attempt to make sense of what’s “normal” and to understand how language works, as when she asks about the word interactive, “Does ‘inter’ mean between, just like ‘international’ means ‘between nations’? Does ‘active’ mean ‘exercise’? What would ‘between-exercise’ mean?” This has plenty of heart. Agent: Lisa Baker, Aitken Alexander Assoc. (Feb.)