Aliens Are Coming! (by Meghan McCarthy)

It’s 1938, and Americans are glued to their radios listening to what appears to be an invasion by Martians! It’s a prank, of course, the now infamous radio hoax engineered by Orson Welles based on H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds. This historical picture book tells the story of how it happened.

On the surface, this rich book is a fun tale of a famous prank. But Meghan McCarthy’s slobbering aliens serve up a wealth of material for curious kids to explore. She forthrightly sets up the tale by introducing 1930s radios and letting kids know this is a true story of a pretend story, and then lets the fun begin. Just like listeners in the 1930s, kids may fall for the prank all over again. At the back of the book, she offers extensive background on the radio play, H.G. Wells’ perspective, and a bibliography; there’s even more at the Web site for the book, released as a hardcover in 2006. The style of the text offers another worthy challenge to kids, presenting excerpts in the format of a play.

McCarthy’s illustrations pay homage to pulp fiction of the ‘30s and ‘40s, from the gooey letters on the cover to the ads in the back pages (“Electric-Tuning Radio! Even a baby can tune it!”). History is rarely this much fun.

Cartoons evocative of classic sci-fi are a perfect mix of goofy and spooky.

Author: Meghan McCarthy
Publisher: Dragonfly Books
Publication date: August 11, 2009
Number of pages: 40
Hardcover price: $16.95
Paperback price: $6.99
Read Aloud: 5
Read Alone: 8