First Day on Earth (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: First Day on Earth Claire Gross Castellucci, Cecil . First Day on Earth. Scholastic, 2011. [160p]. ISBN 978-0-545-06082-0 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys R* Gr. 7-12. A gentle soul who helps out strangers in need and patiently cares for his alcoholic, depressed mother, Mal would love to leave this world, to be free and far away from human cruelty, and when the aliens—the ones who abducted him for three days when he was twelve—come back, that's exactly what he'll finally be able to do. His accidental attendance of an abductee support group in place of the Alateen meeting he usually attends puts him in contact with Hooper, whose strange, otherworldly behavior is explained when he claims to be an alien himself. Castellucci plays powerfully with the ambiguity surrounding the truth of Hooper's identity and Mal's past experience in a way that recalls Fisher's Corbenic (BCCB 11/06), and the balance of indicators for mental illness versus extraterrestrial event is expert and provocative. Mal's base-level depression is so powerful that he seems unable to imagine an earthly cure ("If I could help [my mother] to understand . . . she would maybe laugh, and the brown dead plants in the garden that she has forgotten about would turn green again. . . . They must have a ray gun for that"), while Hooper lives isolated and detached from human experience, offering commentary on the world's evils but nevertheless evincing a childlike joy in the acts of kindness he witnesses from Mal. The prose is spare but dense, lyrical and strongly emotive, and younger teens will find the story accessible and affecting even as older readers can revel in its emotional complexity and thematic sophistication. Mal's innate warmth, along with the tenuous connections Hooper helps him build with a couple of peers, bring glimmers of light to what is overall a painfully sad (if ultimately hopeful) story of abandonment and disaffection. Ultimately, it hardly matters whether the aliens are real or metaphorical; it is Mal's earthly journey that will grab readers' hearts. [End Page 139] Copyright © 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois