Ed's Terrestrials

Ed is an average little boy: He likes reading comics, and he gets tongue-tied when his teacher asks him what he wants to be when he grows up. Then one night, as he is reading comics by flashlight under his covers, three friendly extraterrestrials crash-land in his backyard and take over his treehouse. The three aliens, Marcello, Al, and Gus, are on the run from their would-be masters, who forced the aliens to work as slaves at the Intergalactic Food Court. The trio hijacked a spaceship and ran, with an enemy ship in hot pursuit, until they were winged and forced to land on earth. Now they are bringing their friends over and looking to Ed for advice on what they can do here on earth. This forces Ed to do some serious thinking, and of course it makes him realize that he could do lots of worthwhile things as well. A tale like this wouldn't be complete without a villain, and in this case, it's Maximus Obliterus, an alien in a huge robot suit who is determined to get the aliens back to the food court. He teams up with Ed's super-rich, super-selfish classmate Natalie, and the two track down the aliens, but thanks to a combination of quick thinking and some mad hairdressing skills, they distract Maximus and escape. This graphic novel really lends itself to reading aloud. The goofy aliens provide a lot of scope for silly voices, and the story involves a lot of wrong guesses and unlikely statements that will have kids giggling. The character designs for the monsters are more wacky than scary, including a giant purple slug that looks and talks just like Elvis. Jourdan's art is bold and colorful, and the layouts are fairly simple. The art does look like it was produced on a computer, but that's not likely to bother the target demographic. Sava's story is imaginative, with a few unexpected twists, and it touches on a lot of themes that children may be thinking about in the early grades: What they want to do when they grow up, how different people choose niches that fit their talents, even questions of slavery and free will. Everything is handled with a light touch and plenty of humor, though. With its over-the-top characters and lively story, Ed's Terrestrials is a natural choice for grownups to read aloud to kids--or for kids to read aloud to the grownups. -- Brigid Alverson

My 6 year old son loves this book as we have read through it 3 times and have only had it a few weeks. The story is friendly with just enough umpgh to keep you interested. No threat of seeing or hearing the adult connotations that riddles many other books. I highly recommend this for anyone with kids.

I'm a huge fan of any books I can hand to a kid without fear. This book is one of them. I work in an office and need books that I can give kids without fear that the parents will have issues with anything in them. When kids have this in their hands their attention is on the book, not on the time they're kept waiting. I've got multiple books by Scott Christian Sava, they're all worth it.

There's few things in comics that I love more than a good, all-ages graphic novel, both for my own personal enjoyment and to be able to share it with my 6-year old son. In the past, I've praised the likes of A Bit Haywire, Amelia Rules!, Bumperboy, and Superhero -- all excellent reads for kids ages 6-60+ -- and Scott Christian Sava's delightful Ed's Terrestrials joins that list. Fans of such entertaining Nickelodeon fare as Fairly Oddparents and Jimmy Neutron will love Sava's slightly younger-skewing tale of aliens on the run who've crash landed in the titular Ed's tree house and look to him as their savior. Ed is your typical middle America pre-teen who doesn't know what he wants to do when he grows up -- "I like to read comic books!" -- but comes to understand that you can do anything you want to if you follow your dreams. Ed's nemesis -- his "bazillionaire" classmate, Natalie, who has a weakness for "shiny, pretty things" -- teams up with the Intergalatic Food Court's Mall Security Guard, Maximus Obliterus, who threatens to destroy the Earth if Ed doesn't surrender his new friends. Diego Jourdan's artwork is clean and colorful, with great attention to character design that gives the lead humans and each alien, no matter how peripheral, a distinctive identity. While it may sound sappy and/or overly outlandish, it's neither as Sava and Jourdan keep the humor and action coming at a steady pace, and their cast of characters is extremely likeable -- even the "bad" guys. Ed and Natalie are similar to Timmy and Vicky from Fairly Oddparents, perfect foils for one another, and coupled with a potentially unlimited alien cast, Ed's Terrestrials is not only a smile-inducing winner the whole family can enjoy, but a worthy franchise-in-the-making that I'd like to see more of.