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WORK TITLE: Life Hacks for a Little Alien
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CITY: London
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COUNTRY: United Kingdom
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RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:University of East Anglia, M.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Alice Franklin is a London-based writer. She earned a creative writing degree from the University of East Anglia and followed up by publishing her first novel, Life Hacks for a Little Alien. In it, Franklin explored themes of neurodivergence in children.
Franklin published her first book, Life Hacks for a Little Alien, in 2025. An omniscient narrator tells a three-year-old girl what her life will be like in the years ahead. The narrator calls her Little Alien and shows her how different she is from other kids. She gets bullied by kids and even teachers at school. The girl responds to these instances with guttural noises. She takes an interest in the Voynich Manuscript after seeing a documentary about it on television. It is said that the illustrated codex from the 1400s was made by aliens as nobody can decode its text or illustrations. With the girl believing that she is an alien because of her differences with other kids, she finds purpose in researching more about the Voynich Manuscript and trying to solve its mysteries. Through this, she gains friendship and the ability to accept herself and her differences.
In an interview with Scott Simon in Weekend Edition Saturday, Franklin talked about her use of the second person in the novel. She admitted that “the whole novel is told—there’s an unnamed narrator talking to an unnamed protagonist. So it’s really like an I addressing a you. Also, I just quite like second-person present tense. I find it quite easy to work from this perspective…. I also kind of wanted the readers of the story to feel as much empathy as possible with this small creature.”
A Publishers Weekly contributor pointed out that the author “delightfully renders her neurodivergent protagonist’s attempts to make sense of what’s “normal” and to understand how language works.” Booklist contributor Cari Dubiel remarked that “this is a moving story of a unique girl learning to embrace her differences.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor noted that “the writing can be a bit arch, and sometimes repetitive, but these are minor quibbles.” Nevertheless, the same critic reasoned that “originality and cerebral playfulness combine with affecting family drama to make a satisfying, lively novel.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, January 1, 2025, Cari Dubiel, review of Life Hacks for a Little Alien, p. 26.
Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2025, review of Life Hacks for a Little Alien.
Publishers Weekly, December 2, 2024, review of Life Hacks for a Little Alien, p. 35.
ONLINE
Hachette Book Group website, https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/ (August 24, 2025), author interview.
Weekend Edition Saturday, https://www.npr.org/ (February 8, 2025), Scott Simon, author interview.
Open Book Interview: Alice Franklin
Alice Franklin lives and works in London. She has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. Life Hacks for a Little Alien is her debut novel.
When Little Alien, a lonely girl who doesn’t see the world like the other children seem to, sees a late-night TV special introducing her to the mysterious Voynich Manuscript, she experiences something she hasn’t before: hope.
Are there others like her who also feel like they’re from another planet? Life Hacks for a Little Alien is a moving coming-to-age novel about what it feels like to grow up neurodivergent.
Chilean Poet by Alejandro Zambra because I thought she’d like it.
If You Could Have Any Superpower, what would it be?
The ability to speak, read, and write any language.
I ate a sandwich from a place called Max’s Sandwich Shop. It had spring rolls and kimchi in it. I don’t know who made it. Maybe Max?
In 'Life Hacks for a Little Alien', a little girl finds comfort in an unlikely source
February 8, 20258:18 AM ET
Heard on Weekend Edition Saturday
Headshot of Scott Simon
Scott Simon
6-Minute Listen
Transcript
NPR's Scott Simon speaks with author Alice Franklin about her debut novel, Life Hacks for a Little Alien.
Sponsor Message
SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Alice Franklin's new novel is a story told by an often-lonely little girl in the south of England who doesn't seem to see the world or hear its sounds or speak and think in the way other children do. So when she hears on late-night TV about a mysterious manuscript, an ancient document written in an unknown and alien language, she thinks, at last, these could be my people. "Life Hacks For A Little Alien" is the widely-praised debut novel from Alice Franklin, who joins us now from the studios of the BBC in London. Thank you so much for being with us.
ALICE FRANKLIN: Thank you.
SIMON: What should we know about this unnamed little narrator?
AUTHOR: Well, she's referred to as Little Alien by the narrator. I wrote her as a neurodivergent character - autistic, to be specific.
SIMON: The novel is told in the second person, and let me ask you to read a section in which she speaks for herself to the reader, if I could.
AUTHOR: Sure. (Reading) It goes like this - you won't be normal. Aliens can't be normal. You'll be normal enough, though. And by this, I mean you'll have just enough normal to seem normal without actually being normal. Let me explain. Like normal human children, you'll disregard every grammatical irregularity that comes your way. You'll say things like I goed to school with my mom. I eated the orange, and coloring in is funner than skipping. If I were a prescriptivist, I would lambast you for these flagrant over-regularizations. But as it happens, I am not a prescriptivist. I am a descriptvist, and as a descriptvist, I applaud you.
SIMON: Tell us about your use of the word normal here.
AUTHOR: The protagonist, Little Alien, is always trying to fit in with what is expected of her. But because she's undiagnosed neurodivergent, she doesn't know what's expected of her. It's all just guesswork.
SIMON: Yeah. And so the word normal becomes what?
AUTHOR: Neurotypical, I guess.
SIMON: Why write this novel - what's your thought of writing in the second person?
AUTHOR: Well, the whole novel is told - there's an unnamed narrator talking to an unnamed protagonist. So it's really like an I addressing a you. Also, I just quite like second-person present tense. I find it quite easy to work from this perspective.
SIMON: Easy. You bring yourself into a certain frame of mind.
AUTHOR: I don't know. I also kind of wanted the readers of the story to feel as much empathy as possible with this small creature.
SIMON: What do you think she senses in the Voynich Manuscript when she hears about it? I made a note. She says, since learning about the manuscript, you are on, alive, kicking and awake.
AUTHOR: The Voynich Manuscript is a medieval codex written in an unknown language and an unknown script. The thing about it is that no one's been able to decipher it, even though it's been around for hundreds of years. And I think this really piques Little Alien's interest. I think she can see some parallels between the Voynich Manuscript and her own experiences. People don't really understand her either.
SIMON: And her profound good friend Bobby, how do they support one another?
AUTHOR: Bobby is exactly what Little Alien needs. He's a bit more intrepid. He's a bit braver than her. And so he is sort of courageous for her and is accepting of her differences in a way other people aren't. So that when they go on their little adventure together to see the Voynich Manuscript, he is sort of what enables that adventure and sort of gives her the courage to continue on her journey.
SIMON: Ms. Franklin, how much new language did you create to tell this story?
AUTHOR: What do you mean by new language, please?
SIMON: Well, I think you just read a section where you talked about the words she uses.
AUTHOR: Ah, like go to school, eated the orange. That kind of thing?
SIMON: Yeah.
AUTHOR: These are things that even neurotypical children do when they're acquiring language when they're very young. They make everything more regular than it is because English is a quirky language.
SIMON: Is it kind of like a jazz-style riff on the language we use?
AUTHOR: I don't know.
SIMON: When did this character first begin to take up residence in you?
AUTHOR: Well, I first - I started writing this book five years ago. It took me about three years to write. I kind of got the voice of the narrator first - overly confident, playful, word-loving. And then Little Alien came second a bit. It's 95% fiction, I'd say. I wanted to write Little Alien as a character I could relate to. A large part of her sort of bewilderment comes from the fact that she is undiagnosed autistic, and I myself was not diagnosed as a child. I had to wait till adulthood to be diagnosed.
SIMON: How is it for you now, may I ask?
AUTHOR: I feel pretty - I'm a lot more confident now.
SIMON: What do you want people who read this novel to take away from it?
AUTHOR: If readers are neurodivergent, it'd be nice if they read this story and felt like it resonated a bit. If they're neurotypical, perhaps it might shed some more light on what autism can be like for some people. It's hard to encapsulate it, even just within one novel. But also, I just wanted to tell an entertaining, enjoyable story as well. So even if people learn nothing but enjoy the narrative, I think that's still valid. I'd still be pleased with that.
SIMON: Alice Franklin. Her debut novel, "Life Hacks For A Little Alien." Thank you so much for speaking with us.
AUTHOR: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF EL TEN ELEVEN'S "MY ONLY SWERVING")
Franklin, Alice LIFE HACKS FOR A LITTLE ALIEN Little, Brown (Fiction None) $29.00 2, 11 ISBN: 9780316576055
In this debut novel, a British girl grows up half believing she's an actual alien because she views the world so differently than other children.
An unnamed, omniscient narrator tells the 3-year-old girl the story of her life to come. Franklin hits all the notes common in novels about children on the spectrum or having "issues." Little Alien, as the narrator calls her, is bullied by other children and by teachers, reads situations with an eccentric yet oddly insightful literalness, and acts out her frustration with guttural noises. Yet the book's tone and structure offer unexpected surprises. The narrator addresses the novel directly to Little Alien and also includes numerous footnotes that define terms, suggest further readings, and explain complex concepts to both Little Alien and the reader as the novel evolves into a deep dive into an actual, somewhat academic, ongoing mystery surrounding the Voynich Manuscript, an illustrated codex discovered in 1912 and now residing at Yale's Beinecke Library. Dating from the 1400s, the manuscript includes odd pictures and writing in a language no one has yet decoded. At 12, Little Alien happens upon a television interview in which the widow of a Voynich researcher mentions that her husband believed the manuscript was the work of aliens. Little Alien's interest is piqued. Until now she has suffered through childhood discounted as an oddball at school while coping with her mother's bouts of mental illness at home (fortunately aided by her sane, loving, understandably anxious father). Discovering the Voynich Manuscript changes her life, giving her not only a sense of direction but a pathway toward friendship and self-acceptance. Along the way she meets a series of unlikely protectors, not least a linguist who sees nothing alien about her new protégé. The writing can be a bit arch, and sometimes repetitive, but these are minor quibbles.
Originality and cerebral playfulness combine with affecting family drama to make a satisfying, lively novel.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Franklin, Alice: LIFE HACKS FOR A LITTLE ALIEN." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Feb. 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A827101154/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=3235fc9d. Accessed 30 July 2025.
Life Hacks for a Little Alien.
By Alice Franklin.
Feb. 2025. 336p. Little, Brown, $29 (9780316576055).
Franklin's debut is quirky and charming even as it deals with important social and mental-health issues. In a second-person point of view, an unidentified narrator has the ability to peer into a little girl's mind. The little girl, who is never named, believes she is an alien, so she's called Little Alien. Little Alien isn't like other kids. Schools don't know what to do with her, and her parents are frustrated by her behavior. She doesn't always speak, she rocks when she's feeling scared or nervous, and she takes everything literally. Little Alien is also navigating her fear of her mother's severe depression and anxiety. But her stress is alleviated when, at the age of 12, she learns about the Voynich Manuscript. This enigmatic book from the fifteenth century contains unknown codes, diagrams, pictures of plants and animals, and much more. Little Alien is fascinated by this codex, and together with her one friend, Bobby, she gets lost in research. This is a moving story of a unique girl learning to embrace her differences.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Dubiel, Cari. "Life Hacks for a Little Alien." Booklist, vol. 121, no. 9-10, Jan. 2025, pp. 26+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A829739303/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0f5acee4. Accessed 30 July 2025.
Life Hacks for a Little Alien
Alice Franklin. Little, Brown, $29 (336p) ISBN 978-0-316-57605-5
Franklin's fresh debut, inspired by her experience with autism, centers on an unnamed girl in southeast England known as Little Alien. She has only one friend, a boy named Bobby who stood up for her once at her previous school. As part of her desire to understand the greater connections between herself and life on Earth, Little Alien latches onto the 15th-century Voynich Manuscript, an indecipherable text believed by some to have been written by extraterrestrials. Hoping to translate it, she delves into the study of linguistics, and she and Bobby sneak off to London to see the manuscript while it's on loan at a university. Their adventure sends their parents into fits of anxiety, particularly Little Alien's mother, who suffers a mental breakdown. After she's institutionalized, Little Alien schemes to break her out. Franklin delightfully renders her neurodivergent protagonist's attempts to make sense of what's "normal" and to understand how language works, as when she asks about the word interactive, "Does 'inter' mean between, just like 'international' means 'between nations'? Does 'active' mean 'exercise? What would 'between-exercise' mean?" This has plenty of heart. Agent: Lisa Baker, Aitken Alexander Assoc. (Feb.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Life Hacks for a Little Alien." Publishers Weekly, vol. 271, no. 46, 2 Dec. 2024, p. 35. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A819405149/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=d630d714. Accessed 30 July 2025.