Great lines from “My Life Among the Aliens” by Gail Gauthier

On her blog, Gail Gauthier recently mentioned how her book “My Life Among the Aliens” is based on her experiences as a suburban mom.

I was shocked. When I write, I try to go back to middle school, so my books are definitely from the kids point of view.

Gauthier is SO GOOD at sounding like a kid that I would have figured she did the same thing. (But with a chapter called “How Mom Saved the Planet” I should have suspected something.)

However she does it, she knows her kid talk and her kid thinking.

Here are a few examples:

“I have noticed over the years that Dad is a lot better at thinking of reasons for not doing things than he is at thinking of reasons for doing them.”

On the subject of mothers: “They won’t let you play in the street and they tell you to go to bed when they know you’re not tired.”

Birthday presents: “I got a baseball glove that is now too small for me, a space coloring book that I let somebody borrow and never saw again, a bike horn that I never got a chance to use, a lunch box with a Thermos bottle that leaked, a decorate-your-own t-shirt that I never did and now it doesn’t fit anymore, a bug net that my mother sat on the handle and bent and school clothes from Brendan’s mother.”

“[Dad] says that if everyone gave up the first time something didn’t work right, we’d still be living in caves. That would be neat.”

Wow, all this and aliens, too. What a book!