You'll Like It Here (Everybody Does)

by Ruth White Narrated by Jesse Bernstein, Becca Battoe

Overview

While Meggie and David Blue are from another planet, they're a lot like Earth kids, with similar hopes and dreams, and can't wait to grow up. BUT they also have GROSSLY UNIQUE qualities, such as blue streaks in their hair that pop up randomly and language skills that sound like nothing on this planet. The story takes these alien kids, along with their mother and grandfather, by accident, to a far planet in which the society is not only oppressive but hostile to individual freedom. People are kept submissive through drugs and brainwashing. The Blues, who have spent time in free societies recognize the upside-down-ness of this world. They're almost helpless to do anything, but do what they can, plan their escape, and vow to help others.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Readers familiar with White's oeuvre—historical fiction written in a convincing Southern vernacular—may be surprised by her latest. It starts out as standard White, with a single mother and her two kids enjoying simple country life, and then, whaddyaknow? it turns out they are aliens. What follows is a mild Orwellian tale that breaks no new ground. Meggie Blue's family blends in on Earth except for fluorescent blue streaks in their hair that they dye or hide under caps. They've already had to move once, from California to North Carolina, and now whispers about their odd speech and mannerisms force them to flee again. Leaving in a rush, they fumble the coordinates and arrive in Fashion City on an alternate Earth, where they are repeatedly told, "You'll like it here. Everybody does," and everybody is popping Lotus, a tranquilizer provided by "The Fathers." Though the revelations about the Fathers' governance get progressively darker, the overall tone is curiously amiable, and the vagueness of the villain saps the story of the menace it needs to build tension. Ages 9–12. (June)

School Library Journal

Gr 4–6—Ruther White, best known for her Newbery Honor book Belle Praeter's Boy (Farrar, 1996), departs from her usual genre of historical fiction to spin a tale (Delacorte, 2011) of alternate reality, aliens, and dystopia. Maggie and David Blue are refugees from another world, trying to live like normal humans in an ordinary American town. When townspeople begin to suspect their true identity, they escape in a space ship with their mother and grandfather and end up on an alternate Earth in a place called Fashion City. At first their new home seems like a nice place with no crime or sickness, but soon the Blue family realizes that utopia comes at a high price. This novel has many of the elements found in teen and adult dystopian novels—brainwashing, sedating drugs, and the killing of old people—but they are toned down for a younger audience. The story is written in the first person in alternating chapters from the points of view of David, 15, and Maggie,11. Becca Battoe and Jessie Bernstein fluently and with engaging interpretation voice Maggie and David respectively. While Battoe's reading sounds age-appropriate, Bernstein's attempt at a teenage voice is not quite as convincing. An entertaining listen for young people transitioning to teen literature.—Donna Cardon, Provo City Library, UT

Kirkus Reviews

When aggressive xenophobia closes in, it's time to record memories in a mysterious whistle, pile into an invisible spaceship and optimistically fly to another planet. Isn't that what everybody does?

It is for Meggie Blue and her family when their tranquil life in North Carolina is interrupted by townspeople rightly suspecting them of being alien. Though their native tongue is unusual and they sporadically sprout glowing blue hair after a certain age, the Blues are far from threatening and adore the sanctuary Earth provided when pollution destroyed their home planet. However, with their lives threatened, Meggie and her family vacate unwittingly to a parallel world characterized by destitute outlooks, subliminal mind control and really boring clothes. Alternating narration between 12-year-old Meggie and her 14-year-old brother, David, White (best known for Southern coming-of-age realism) paves the way for a relatively broad audience. And though the dialogue has occasional unnatural tempos, these awkward bumps can be chalked up to otherworldly speech patterns. Hovering in the vicinity of ET, The Twilight Zone and 1984, the attractive science-fiction formula accommodates the familiar coming-of-age arc. More important is the underlying theme of originality. Meggie and her family repeatedly have to prove (even to themselves) that being different or just plain alien is more than okay—even if your hair turns blue.

A quirky commentary on age, environment, government and self-expression. (Science fiction. 11-14)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169406689
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	06/14/2011
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	8 - 11 Years

Read an Excerpt

1

Meggie Speaks

When I was in the third grade on the California coast, a crazy man came into my classroom one day and started waving a knife around. He said he was an alien hunter. He had a purple blotch on his face that was shaped exactly like Mexico, and his eyes were wild. Help came before he could hurt anybody, but he left scars all the same.

I was so petrified I don't remember a thing after that, until I saw Gramps holding out his arms to me. He lifted me from the couch in the principal's office, where I lay curled up, and held me close. He smelled like freshly baked bread.

And that was the day my nightmares started.

At the end of that school term, Mom quit her job at the university, where she taught astronomy, and found a new one at another university, in North Carolina. A moving van carried our belongings across the country, but Mom, Gramps, my brother, David, and I spent five amazing days and nights traveling in our car, taking in the sights of America.

In North Carolina we were thrilled to pieces with our own seven-acre plot of land surrounding the farmhouse Mom had bought for us. Locally it was called the old Fischer place, for the family who'd lived there for years and years before us. There were apple trees and lots of blackberry bushes, a grape arbor, a weeping cherry tree, and I don't know what all.

I barely remember Daddy, who died when I was three. From then on, Gramps, who is my mom's father, tended our house and took care of us. David and I never knew Grandmama, because she died before we were even old enough to have a memory. Gramps, in his sixties, was still as energetic and feisty as a boy. He took good care of himself through a healthy diet and exercise, and because of that, he seemed much younger than he was. At times, in fact, when asked his age, he actually fibbed, subtracting five years or so, and he got away with it.

My mother was the best mom in the world. She was strong like a rock, sweet, smart, and pretty too, but it was Gramps I turned to when I needed help or comfort or affection, probably because he was always available. Gramps was also a wannabe artist. In California he stayed at home and happily painted his pictures when Mom, David, and I were at school. Sometimes he sold his stuff at arts festivals for a few dollars each. But now that we were older, and living in a new place, he wanted to walk out into the world a bit, as he put it. So that first September he began teaching art to high school students in the small town near us. Next door to the high school were the lower schools, where David and I enrolled. Mom's new job was only thirty minutes away. So there we were, a happy bunch of campers in our new home.

The next spring we sowed our seeds in the ground and watched them sprout and grow into living plants that made tomatoes and cucumbers for us, along with green peppers, corn, and melons. We got good vibes from the earth and spent every hour possible outside. Another planting season flew by, and now it's spring again. David and I are practically all grown up, as I am finishing the sixth grade and he the eighth.

The nightmares that started for me in the third grade eased up over the years, but at certain times I still feel like that little girl who was so scared and helpless, she wet her pants. I see things in the shadows, and when I round a corner, I halfway expect something hideous to jump out at me. I also hear noises under my bed and in my closet.

Some shrink told Mom that it's common for a person to carry a thing like this forever. That doesn't exactly make me feel any better. It doesn't help either having a brother who is perfect—one who works out complicated math problems just for the fun of it, and beats the computer in chess. Yeah, David's so middle-aged he makes me sick, and do you think he's ever been afraid of anything at all? I don't think so.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm sure about only one thing in my life, and that is that I want to be able to do something—anything—that my brother can't do. At least, I want to do it better than he does. Will that ever happen?

Now at school a new buzz has started. You know the way things go around. One year you'll have stories about witchcraft, and who might be a witch and who might be a vampire or a werewolf. One year there's a ghost in somebody's house, or at one of the umpteen cemeteries in our little town. Everybody has a hair-raising story to tell you at lunch break. And this year, wouldn't you know? It's UFOs.

"There are aliens among us," the kids whisper, because teachers don't want to hear junk like that.

"They are here to take over the earth."

"If we don't get them first, they'll get us."

My very best friend is Kitty—short for Kathryn—Singer, a tiny, sparkly African American girl who always wears purple. I love her to pieces, but I gotta tell you she has an imagination that won't quit. Maybe it's because both her parents are librarians, and the whole family reads tons of stories, sci-fi and otherwise. They also watch every movie that comes along, no matter how far-out.

On a golden Saturday in May, Kitty and I are picking strawberries from our patch when she says to me, "Did you know the aliens come in the middle of the night when you're sleeping, and suck your soul out through your big toe? Then you become one of them, and you don't even know it. You go on living regular until one day they make you do evil things."

"Suck out your soul through your big toe? Kitty, you've been watching way too much sci-fi."

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