How to Sell Your Family to the Aliens

Paul Noth, Bloomsbury (APRIL) Hardcover $13.99 (224pp), 978-1-68119-657-2

From its very first outrageous sentence, Paul Noth’s How to Sell Your Family to the Aliens is hysterically funny. An evil grandmother, an oblivious father, an absent mother, and a group of siblings with various odd skills and abilities set the scene for misadventures.

Happy Conklin Jr. is ten years old, and is the only son in a family with six children. His brilliant father’s inventions have made the family extremely wealthy, but all of the money is controlled by Hap’s evil grandmother, who keeps the family in two small rooms in the basement of her mansion.

The five eldest siblings have all been experimented on by their grandmother; one can see the future, the fraternal twins become entirely identical, and one is a compulsive kleptomaniac. Hap himself has been able to grow a full beard since he was a baby.

While Hap’s mom is away on business, the older children take turns watching the baby, trying to protect her from their grandmother. In an attempt to get his grandmother away from himself and the baby, Hap accidentally sells his entire family to a group of aliens. Now he must figure out where they are and how to get them back, with no one but a little lizard named Squeep to help him.

This is an incredibly imaginative story. Each decision that Hap makes seems to result in greater strangeness and hilarity; it’s impossible to predict what will happen from one page to the next.

This is the first book in a planned series to be written and illustrated by cartoonist Paul Noth. It is sure to have everyone laughing out loud and looking forward to the next installment.