Life Hacks for a Little Alien

by Alice Franklin

Genres: Coming of Age; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

For readers of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and Remarkably Bright Creatures, this “unique, engaging, and insightful” (Pip Williams, author of The Dictionary of Lost Words) debut novel about one little girl’s obsession with a mysterious manuscript is a love letter to language—how it shapes the world for each of us and connects us all in the end. 

“Climb up here, Little Alien. Sit next to me. I will tell you about life on this planet. I will tell you how it goes.”
 
Before she thinks of herself as Little Alien, our narrator is only a lonely little girl living in southeast England, who doesn’t understand the world the way other children seem to. So when a late-night TV special introduces her to the mysterious Voynich Manuscript—an ancient tome written in an indecipherable language—Little Alien experiences something she hasn’t before: hope. Could there be others like her, who also feel like they’re from another planet?

Convinced the Voynich Manuscript holds the answers she needs, Little Alien turns to the place she feels at peace: the library. What she learns there sets Little Alien and her best (and only) friend Bobby on a course toward finding this strange book. Where it leads them will change everything.

Narrated by an unexpected guide who has arrived to offer Little Alien the advice she’ll need to find her way, Life Hacks for a Little Alien explores a less-usual experience of the world with heartbreaking empathy. Inviting us into the head of a child who doesn’t read her surroundings the way we might assume, Alice Franklin will have readers swinging from stitches to tears on the uneven path to finding a life that fits, even when you yourself do not.
 

Release date: February 11, 2025

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 336

Sample

IT GOES LIKE THIS. You won’t be normal. Aliens can’t be normal. You’ll be normal enough, though. And by this, I mean you’ll have just enough normal to seem normal without actually being normal.

Let me explain. Like normal human children, you’ll disregard every grammatical irregularity that comes your way. You’ll say things like ‘I goed to school with my mum’, ‘I eated the orange’, and ‘Colouring in is funner than skipping’.

If I were a prescriptivist, I would lambast you for these flagrant over-regularisations.i But as it happens, I am not a prescriptivist, I am a descriptivist.ii And as a descriptivist, I applaud you. ‘Goed’ is more logical than ‘went’. ‘Eated’ is more logical than ‘ate’. ‘Funner’ is more logical than ‘more fun’ and it’s a funner expression to boot. These assertions would chime with the internal grammars of many small humans. You’re blending in. Well done.

But you’re still wrong. ‘Goed’ and ‘eated’ and ‘funner’ aren’t words. You won’t find them in reputable dictionaries or even disreputable dictionaries. They’re wrong. You’re wrong. You’re wrong all the time and you can’t help it.

Let me explain. On your first day of school, you look cute in your tiny stripy tie. You go into the classroom, looking cute, holding your dad’s hand – something that’s also cute. When he lets go of your hand, you cling on to his elbow. When he shakes his elbow free, you wrap your entire body around his legs. When he wriggles you off him, he disappears out the door and you panic.

You are panicked. You don’t know what to do. There are other children. The other children are busy. The other children are doing seemingly random activities. You wonder if you should join in with the seemingly random activities, but you don’t know which activity to choose. Do you Play-Doh or colour in? Do you sandpit or clay? Do you Jenga or glockenspiel?

All these questions – or the absence of any answers to these questions – make your throat feel weird and your eyes well up. You’re upset. This is what happens when you’re upset. You don’t know that yet, though. Your little body is still a mystery to you.

The teacher comes over, but only at a leisurely speed. For a human, she is not in very good condition. She is old and creaks when she walks. Slowly, she eases herself down to your level until her head is at your height. She asks if you’re OK.

‘Are you OK?’ she asks.

You don’t know if you’re OK because you don’t know what ‘OK’ means in this context. You don’t currently have any unmet physiological needs. You don’t need to eat or sleep or drink or pee. Does that mean you’re OK?

‘Do you want to play with Henry?’ the teacher asks.

You wipe your nose on your sleeve. ‘Henry’ is just another word you do not understand.

‘Let’s go find Henry.’

The teacher prods you gently in the direction of outside. When you get outside, she prods you in the direction of the sandpit. When you get to the edge of the sandpit, she prods you until you step into the sandpit.

‘Here’s Henry,’ the teacher says.

In the sandpit, there are three boys. One has red hair, one has brown hair, and one is blond. One of these boys must be Henry, but the teacher doesn’t tell you which one. The three boys stare at you. You wonder if you have a Cheerio stuck on your forehead. You ate Cheerios that morning and it wouldn’t be the first time one of them got stuck on your forehead, it would be the second. You rub your forehead. There is no Cheerio.

The teacher tells you she’s going to leave you with Henry now.

‘I’m going to leave you with Henry now,’ the teacher says. ‘Don’t throw anything. If sand gets into anyone’s eye, they’ll have to go to hospital. Cheerio.’

When the teacher is gone, you stand with your arms at your sides while you sway, wondering if ‘Henry’ is the collective noun for a group of feral children.

At some point, the boy with red hair speaks.

‘Why is she just standing there?’ he asks.

Ten minutes later, you are covered in sand, standing in the creaky teacher’s office. Your teacher is looking at you through her glasses. The glasses have a magnifying quality. They make her look like one of those animals with massive eyes.iii

The teacher is talking to you about being nice. She is saying things like ‘It’s nice to be nice’ and ‘We don’t attack each other with sand in this classroom’. You do not dignify these banalities with a nod, let alone a verbal response. In the end, the teacher tells you she is going to call your dad. She tells you this twice, and twice you do not care.

‘I’m going to call your dad,’ she says. ‘I’m going to call your dad right now.’ When your dad answers the phone, the teacher changes her tone. What was once a nasal drone is now a breathy singsong that makes her sound manically chipper, as if she’s determined to have a really good time despite life being despicable. ‘Your daughter is not saying anything… We didn’t know she was… We really need to know… We need to know if children don’t… No, she’s not speaking at all… She’s also just attacked several other children… Sand…’

You’re pissed off when your dad arrives. You know this because you feel like frowning. You look at your dad, frowning. Your dad looks at you but he’s not frowning. He doesn’t say anything. He just starts walking you home. While he is walking you home, you want to ask him what on earth he was thinking, sending you to a school where they don’t even teach you how to read. But then he asks you if you want pizza for tea.

‘Do you want pizza for tea?’ he asks.

You nod. Even though you eated pizza yesterday, another pizza can’t hurt.

‘What do you say?’

In most families, when an adult asks a child what do you say, it means ‘Don’t be a little shit, say please’ or ‘Say thank you, you little shit’. In your family, however, it just means you are required to speak.

‘Yes,’ you say.

‘What do you say?’

‘Yes, please.’

Further reading:

Is Homeschooling Right for Your Child?

An Introduction to Literacy for Illiterate Kids

Bushbabies: Why the Massive Eyes?

i Prescriptivists are people who think there are right and wrong ways to use language. They wince at aspirated aitches and moan about unsightly neologisms. They can be a bit annoying.

ii Descriptivists are people who study how language is actually used. They embrace the unrelenting sea of language change as neither a sign of progress nor a sign of decay. They can also be a bit annoying.

iii Bushbabies.

YOU DO NOT LAST very long at this particular school. And when I say this, I am employing a technique called ‘litotes’ – something that means you really don’t last very long at all.

One Tuesday morning, your normal teacher is off sick. Another teacher is standing in. This teacher is not in control of you. She is not in control of anyone.

You are sitting next to a kid called Joe and a kid called Louis. The three of you are doing arts and crafts. You hold the safety scissors carefully, cut shapes out of the cardboard. The kid called Joe then sticks these shapes to another piece of cardboard. After this, the kid called Louis pours quantities of PVA glue over everything, and everyone heaps glitter everywhere. It’s teamwork. It’s dreamwork. It’s art, but only kind of.

But lo! In the corner over there, a kid called Rebecca has just had an accident. By this, I mean she has just done a wee while still wearing her clothes. She is doing a lot of crying about this as she waddles around uncomfortably, her legs wide like a cowboy.

Even though such things go with the territory of teaching young children, the teacher seems alarmed by Rebecca’s accident. She asks the assistant to take Rebecca out of the classroom and guide her somewhere – anywhere – else.

‘Can you help her out the room?’ she asks the assistant.

The assistant, an old, uncooperative woman, looks at the teacher for a few seconds. ‘Where do you want me to take her?’

‘The nurse’s room, maybe?’ the teacher says.

The assistant shakes her head. ‘I don’t know if this merits a trip to the nurse’s room.’

‘Wherever, then,’ the teacher says. ‘I don’t know the protocol.’

‘I think she just has to sit back down,’ the assistant says. ‘She’ll dry out soon enough.’

The teacher’s eyes go wide. ‘I think someone needs to phone her mum or dad.’

The assistant crosses her arms. ‘Excuse me,’ she says. Then in a stage whisper everyone everywhere can hear: ‘Don’t you know Rebecca’s parents are dead?’

At this, a still-damp Rebecca cries even harder, the teacher and the assistant go to comfort her, and Joe and Louis seize an opportunity.

To be specific, they ask you to go into the cupboard to grab some more supplies. They do this even though you are not allowed to go into the cupboard to grab some more supplies.

‘That’s not allowed,’ you say.

‘It’s OK,’ Joe says.

‘Miss said you could,’ Louis says.

‘I’ll come too,’ Joe says.

‘OK,’ you say, now swayed.

There are a lot of cool things in the cupboard: paints, staplers, felt tips, whiteboard pens.

‘Take those,’ Joe says, lurking by the door to keep a lookout.

‘Huh?’ you ask.

‘Those, there. We can cut them. Take them.’

You look to where he is pointing. You don’t know what the books are, but they do have pretty pictures. Pictures of donkeys. Pictures of deserts. Pictures of mountains. Pictures of men.

You grab a few and plonk them back on your desk.

Joe and Louis start laughing when you begin cutting up the children’s Bibles. Pleased, you smile along. When the teacher finally realises what you’re doing, she sits down on the floor next to Rebecca and starts to wail.

Further reading:

For the Love of Art: Crafting for Kids

For the Love of God: The Bible for Kids

YOUR MIND IS SLUGGISH and your eyes heavy as you lounge in the living room, lying on your stomach under the rug but above the carpet.

Other more conventional seating options are available. For instance, you could be sitting on both the rug and the carpet, much like your cousin is currently doing. Or you could be lying on the sofa much like your dad normally does. Or perching on the pouffe much like your mum normally does. Or standing straight up on one leg, like flamingos do, even though they seem to have at least two legs at their disposal.

You don’t do any of these things. Instead, you lie underneath the rug but above the carpet, watching The Simpsons. You are next to your cousin. Like a normal person, he is sitting cross-legged above both the rug and the carpet. Like an abnormal person, he is eating prawn cocktail crisps. You are not eating prawn cocktail crisps. You are eating salt and vinegar because salt and vinegar is a much better flavour than prawn cocktail. In your opinion, this isn’t even an opinion. In your opinion, it is a fact.

But you are young, and due to the inclusion of words and phrases such as ‘wang’, ‘crap factory’, and ‘homersexual’, The Simpsons has an advisory viewing age of thirteen. Due to this advisory viewing age of thirteen, it is inadvisable that you, a four-and-a-half-year-old, watch it with your cousin, a six-and-a-half-year-old.

I imagine your mum isn’t aware of this viewing advisory age, but if she were aware of this viewing advisory age, she probably wouldn’t care. Why would she? Life throws age-inappropriate things at you all the time. What else are depressive episodes? What else are hangovers disproportionate to the quantity of alcohol imbibed? What else are unhelpful GP reception staff, polite requests for your child to find somewhere else to go to primary school, not-so-polite requests for your child to find somewhere else to go to primary school, and a relentless series of overdue library fines?

As it happens, you don’t care about the viewing advisory age either. No one advises you on anything. Take this whole school situation. No one has spelt out what has been happening, and so you simply don’t know. You don’t know why your half-term holiday has been so long. Similarly, you don’t know why tonight’s dinner has so far just been salt and vinegar crisps when it has never before entailed even a single crisp.

The rug serves as a blanket; the carpet as your bed. On the telly, another alien exists.

‘When I was a young boy,’ the alien says, ‘I wanted to be a baseball.’i

In the corridor, your mum and dad are talking. Your dad has just got home. They are talking about someone, but you don’t know who. They are talking about someone but you don’t think that it’s you.

‘But she’s only been going there since September,’ your dad is saying.

Your cousin turns up the volume. ‘But tonight,’ the alien says, ‘we must move forward, not backward—’

‘Hey,’ your cousin interrupts, pointing at the green alien but looking at you. ‘That one looks like you!’

You study the alien. After careful thought and consideration, you shake your head. ‘No, he doesn’t,’ you say, calmly and accurately. This alien is not like you. He is green with tentacles and a balloon around his head. You do not have those things. Instead, you have arms, legs, a head, and a face.

‘He so does,’ your cousin says. ‘You dribble like that too!’

You raise your hand to your mouth. There is no dribble. Not unless you reach right inside your mouth. Then there is dribble.

‘I’m not an alien,’ you say.

Your cousin lets out a scoff. ‘You so are.’

You frown. You don’t like your cousin saying you’re an alien. You don’t like it because it’s not a nice thing to say. Also, you worry he might be right. You look at your arms and hands. Glowing in the light of the TV, they look alien to you.

In any case, your parents are still in the corridor. ‘What did they say exactly? Let me read it.’ Your dad’s voice sounds different from how he normally sounds.

‘I mean, how is this even allowed? Vandalism? She’s not a vandal. She’s a five-year-old girl—’

‘She’s four and a half.’

‘Four and a half, whatever—’

‘It’s not just about the vandalism. They also have concerns about the class fish.’

‘What class fish?’

‘She tried to put it in the bin, apparently.’

‘Jesus.’

You turn up the volume on the remote. You wonder if – technically speaking – you should look like the alien on TV. If you should be dribbling. If you should be green with tentacles and a balloon around your head.

‘Oi, can you two turn that back down?’

You pretend not to have heard. Even though you are four and a half years old, and even though you are what human people commonly refer to as a girl, you don’t want to think they are talking about you. How could they be talking about you? They are talking about someone who isn’t going to school any more or might not be going to school any more, or at least not her usual school. But you go to school all the time – not recently, but all the time. Don’t you?

Further reading:

So Homeschooling Is Right for Your Child

i ‘Treehouse of Horror VII’, The Simpsons, directed by Mike B. Anderson, season 8, episode 1, Gracie Films, 1996.

TIME PASSES GLOOPILY. THE Moon orbits the Earth which in turn orbits the Sun. A variety of flowers blossom. A variety of flowers die. Politicians resign. Farmers hoe. Buses arrive late and then all at once. Corporate strategists leverage synergy. Some people lose their jobs, others their wallets, others still their minds. Babies are born screaming. Old folks die silent, cold, and alone.

In other words, you are years into this so-called homeschooling – something that entails a lot of home but not a lot of schooling. Neither your mum nor your dad is teaching you much. You simply exist in your three-up, three-down suburban household in the south-east of England, UK. Your dad goes to work. Your mum stays at home. As far as you are concerned, every day is a weekend day. This is OK. You are still very youngi and don’t know any better.

Most mornings, you traipse around after your mum as she does her things – sometimes cleaning and sometimes laundry but mostly an awful lot of reading. Your mum loves her books, especially educational books, especially how-to books. Indeed, the more didactic the book is, the more she is bound to love it. One morning she’ll be reading How to Grow a Garden. By the afternoon, she’ll be reading Metal Detecting: A Beginner’s Guide. By the evening, she’ll be reading How to Train Your Dog. You don’t have a dog. You just have a mum. You sit next to her, colouring in as she learns her lessons.

Occasionally, your mum doesn’t read but watches the telly instead. Daytime TV shows are her favourites. She likes the ones set in hospitals, but also seems interested in the ones about traffic cops. During these shows, she likes to tell you things about the UK police force. Like this, you learn that UK police officers sometimes wear uniforms but sometimes just normal clothes. You also learn that you have a right to remain silent and that, if you ever see a police officer around the house, you must tell your mum.

When the mood seems to strike her, your mum chats to you as she would a friend. This is how you learn about the things she likes to eat and the things she likes to drink, the jobs she hopes to train for – when she feels ready, when she feels better, when she has time, when she finishes all the books she’s been reading. Like a good girl, you don’t say much in response. Like a good girl, you just sit and listen really nicely.

But today is a bit different. It’s the first day summer has really kicked in. It’s a Friday, twenty-something degrees, the Sun is blaring, and the sky is blue. In honour of this, today is a non-book day.

Your mum and your auntie are sitting in the garden, drinking white wine and basking in tranquillity and conversation as they brown off their pink skin. Inside, your cousin is in the living room, watching a TV programme. You don’t like the look of it, and so you join your mum and your auntie in the garden instead.

You lie yourself down on a lounger next to them. The lounger is plastic and white. Your mum and auntie have lounger cushions but you do not. This means your lounger is more uncomfortable. You try to make do, try to get comfy on an uncomfy thing.

Your mum and your auntie are having one of their conversations. You listen. T. . .