Bruce Coville – Student Alien by Heather Smith

It is a pleasure to welcome Heather Smith to the blog today.  She will share her thoughts on the favorite author of her childhood, Bruce Coville.

When I was a kid, I loved books about aliens. Anything about space and I was into it. Unfortunately, most of what was written in the sci-fi genre was for adults.

 I was sick of all the romance and the drama. I just wanted something cool that starred a kid like me fighting aliens, going into space, and finding cool new creatures to interact with. That is when I found Bruce Coville’s “My Teacher is an Alien” series.

How cool is that? Not only did he write about aliens, but he wrote about a kid my age dealing with them! After quickly devouring the Teacher’s series, I moved onto another series he wrote about kids and aliens, this time tiny shrunken ones, called “Aliens Ate My Homework”. It was just as cool.

The thing I love about Coville’s works was that he wasn’t just into killing aliens. In fact, I don’t remember any real killing at all. The things he focused on where typical kid problems; rebellion, dealing with absent parents, bullies, and even loneliness. He brought the day to day lives of kids into outer space, and made it an exciting read on top of that.

As a child dealing with some of those issues, I loved escaping reality into his stories and still learning valuable lessons. He didn’t preach at you, instead he showed you the universal truths and how people have learned to deal with them. He made you understand and sympathize with the bad guys, get frustrated with the good guys, and realize that everything isn’t always so black and white.

Like most kids, I didn’t know I was learning as I read, but now that I look back I can see how his books helped me to understand the world around me a little better. If you have kids that love aliens and sci-fi, I highly recommend Bruce Coville’s work.

Heather Smith is an ex-nanny. Passionate about thought leadership and writing, Heather regularly contributes to various career, social media, public relations, branding, and parenting blogs/websites. She also provides value to nanny service by giving advice on site design as well as the features and functionality to provide more and more value to nannies and families across the U.S. and Canada. She can be available at H.smith7295 [at] gmail.com.