Fall is when all the great books are released, so we are excited to welcome debut author J.A. Dauber to the blog. His debut, PRESS 1 FOR INVASION, is a perfect book for reluctant readers. It delivers on the humor front, and that combined with the impending alien invasion theme and icky, creepy monsters with tentacles (and icky, creepy monsters with tentacles who make out with each other!) makes this a slam-dunk for emerging readers looking for fun, fresh reads and who are not yet ready to tackle the heavier stuff.

Book Summary

Ten-year-old Matt really wants a phone, but his parents won’t let him have one. When he finds one just lying on the sidewalk, he naturally picks it up and claims it for himself. But when Matt uses his new phone to take pictures, they show the crossing guard in front of his school as a monster. But that can’t be right…can it?

Matt soon learns that: a) his lunch lady is also a monster (actually, an alien); b) an invasion of Earth is due to take place within the next few days; and c) the lunch lady is having cold feet (well, tentacles) about the whole thing and wants his help. Matt and his friend Marcela join forces with her to save the planet.

Battles in their school cafeteria and high above the Earth’s atmosphere place them in very close encounters with alien pets and the business end of a gigantic oven. As the danger mounts, Matt and Marcela must ask themselves what they’re willing to risk to save their friends, their family, and their world.

Interview

I have to say that this is every kids’ nightmare: finding out that their teachers/school workers are actually aliens. I have a distinct memory of a book from my childhood where the teachers turned out to be aliens and I devoured the book. Did you have a similar obsession as a kid and/or what inspired you to write this book? 

I’m glad you feel like it’s got that universal appeal! While I’m not sure that I actually had the thought, or fear, or…even hope, I guess, that there were aliens among us, I was definitely fascinated by the prospect – which I guess is central to all sorts of the most fun fiction, in SF, fantasy, horror – that there’s another world that’s right beside us, a world that’s somehow fascinating and complicated and huge, that we don’t know about. (As I got older, I came to realize that we do have that world: it’s called Grownupland. It even has its own alien language – with words like “mortgage rates,” for example. But that was beyond me then, and even maybe when I started writing PRESS 1!)

 I think you’ve hit upon kids’ natural obsessions with wanting a phone – but maybe not to see if aliens are roaming among us! Why did you decide to have the phone be a prominent part of the book? 

The truth is, the book started with an image in my head, which was a kid looking through the phone camera and seeing a goggle-eyed alien monster in a crossing guard uniform – and then taking the phone away, and everything looking normal. To some extent, I wrote the book to figure out the story behind that image! Which meant asking, well, could every phone do that? Probably not. So why did this kid have that phone? Well, it wasn’t his, maybe. But then how, and why did he have it? And all sorts of things started to fall into place….

You have an interesting take on aliens being interested in our planet. Why did you choose them wanting to ****spoiler***  rather than anything else? 

One central question about alien invasion books, stories, and movies – a tradition with a very distinguished heritage – is: why would they bother? Space is big; what would be worth coming all this way to invade Earth forth? The reasons make a big difference: not to whether our heroes stop the invasion – I will spoil the book to the extent that it does not end with Matt, Marcela, and the rest of their planetary neighbors reduced to a smoking cinder – but how they do it. And of course, that’s all the fun!

Despite the literal weight of saving the world on your main character’s, Matt’s, shoulders, he seems to take it all in stride and even has some amazing ideas along the way. What was your decision process like when crafting Matt?

It’s funny, because in some ways I’m not even sure it was a decision, exactly! I sort of followed him around in my head and tried to write down what he was doing as fast as I possibly could. It turned out I liked him a lot – he’s not perfect, which I think is kind of why – and I think and hope kids will like him, too!

What do you hope readers will take away from Press 1 For Invasion?

A deep and profound desire to tell all their friends that it’s an awesome book and they should get their own copy. (Slightly) more seriously, I hope that readers will just feel like they had a lot of fun. I remember – and I see in my own kids – that feeling, so hard to retrieve sometimes as a grown-up, of just being so lost in a book that the world around them kind of disappears: that’s an invasion, of a literary sort, and it’s the one kind I’m all for!

What was your favorite part about writing the book?

Honestly? When I thought of something funny, which is often the easiest thing to say “yeah, that’s gonna work. That should go in, and it’ll stay in til the end.” They didn’t always, but lots of times they did.

What are some of your favorite middle grade novels and why do you like them so much? 

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention James Ponti, who is not only a great author – I think his Sherlock Society does a remarkable job combining delightful characters with a strong sense of setting and a thoughtful take on history and mystery – but also a great guy: he’s agreed to appear at a bookstore with me to talk about our new books! I will also say that, given my own book’s subject matter, A WRINKLE IN TIME was deeply formative when I was Matt’s age, back in the mists of history.

Now that your book is out in the world, what’s the next step for you?

Well, I’m hopeful that Matt and Marcela’s adventures don’t necessarily come to an end here: of course, that depends on all you readers out there, so fingers crossed! I’m also finishing up a time travel novel (see above) that I think is a lot of fun, and I hope you’ll get to read that soon, too!

Is there anything else you want to share about Press 1 For Invasion or our audience of teachers, librarians, and middle grade authors?

Thank you for this opportunity! I’ll just end with this: in my day job as a professor, I’ve written a number of books prior to this, but this is the first book that any of my kids have read. I have three of them, ages 12, 10, and 7, boy, boy, girl, and the older two both read it. As all of you know, children – even and perhaps especially your own children – are not natural diplomats. (My 10 year old has recently learned the phrase “no offense,” which he then, correctly or not, understands as a get out of jail free card to speak even less diplomatically.) So the fact that the two boys both read the book – each in a single sitting, one staying up until late, literally reading with his light under the covers – and then the ten year old saying, “I think a lot of kids are going to like this” – well, forget about the New York Times. That’s the best review I’m ever going to get. And I hope that you, and the kids who you know, might feel the same way!