Entertainment for the Whole Family

Book Review: You'll Like It Here (Everybody Does) by Ruth White

The Blues are a typical American family. Mom is a single parent, a university professor who really wants to do the best by her kids. Her father, who everyone calls Gramps, likes to paint and does his best to fill in the gap left by his late son-in-law. The children, Meggie and David, like going to school and making friends. They live on a small farm in North Carolina, grow some of their own food -- life is good.

Good, but not perfect. The Blues aren't from around here. Like many Americans, English is their second language. And its possible they are not in this country legally. They came to the U.S. seeking refuge; not political asylum but ecological asylum. The environment in their native land is actually dangerous to their health. Oh, and sometimes their hair turns blue.
The Blues REALLY aren't from around here.

In You'll Like It Here (Everybody Does), Ruth White puts us into the lives of aliens not just from another country, but from another world. In doing so she gives us some basic lessons in tolerance and cultural awareness, and a view of an alternative world where uniformity is literally the rule.

Forced by an unruly mob to flee their comfortable North Carolina lifestyle, the Blues end up in Fashion City, a town in a parallel America. Everyone likes Fashion City, or so it seems. The 'Fathers' provide everything: housing, jobs, security. The price is conformity and the sacrifice of those basic rights that even the alien Blues regard as ... well, inalienable.

Author Ruth White confesses, "This book is unlike anything else I've written." It is unlike anything else I have read. While it contains thematic links to adult works ranging from Stranger in a Strange Land to 1984, it does it in a way accessible to kids, using emotions and ideas my 12 year-old daughter could understand. Without being preachy, You'll Like It Here underscores the true value of friendship, loyalty, and individuality through the eyes of a child, and reminds us as parents how simple yet profound those truths really are.