about the book
DJ Lim hails from a family whose members are all “awesome at something,” but the ten-year-old sees himself as kind of a boring and plain. It is tough being unexceptional when your family and friends all seem exceptional.
Then, something extraordinary happens to DJ. Hilo, an alien boy, falls from the sky right into his backyard! Of course, Hilo is exceptional, too, more exceptional than any of DJ’s family: He can shoot lasers from his hands and even fly!
But Hilo has no idea how to behave or use normal things like food. And clothing. You cannot just go to school in your underwear, you know! DJ is forced to look after Hilo as if he were an especially powerful and energetic puppy.
Soon DJ’s friend, Gina, gets in on the fun, but there was something else that fell from the sky with Hilo: Giant robot insects! But wait! What if the insect robots are only heralds of something worse?
about the author
After being sent away from his doomed alien planet in a space ship large enough only for a baby, like Superman, Judd Winick crash-landed in Dix Hills, New York. He grew up a normal human boy somehow, and graduated from high school in 1988. He then attended the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor’s School of Art, hoping to follow in the footsteps of his cartoonist heroes Garry Trudeau and Berkeley Breathed.
He invented a comic strip, “Nuts and Bolts,” and in his freshman year he started running the school’s newspaper. By his senior year, Judd had been taken under the wing of cartoonist Cathy Guisewite, creator of the comic strip CATHY. With Cathy’s advice, Judd got a development contract, but it didn’t pan out. He cried with sorrow.
In the early 1990s, Judd returned to Long Island to live with his parents after thinking he had failed at life. On a whim, while watching MTV, Judd applied to be on “The Real World: San Francisco,” and he was accepted as a cast member! He cried with joy.
While filming, Judd met Pam Ling, a beautiful medical student, with whom he fell in love, married, had kids, and adopted cats. Judd’s writing took off, too, and his work includes the creation of the Cartoon Network show The Life and Times of Juniper Lee and the screenplay for the animated film Batman: Under the Red Hood, and, of course, the “Hilo” series.
Sources:
Author website
Author video discussing Hilo : 1 : The Boy Who Crashed to Earth
Also by Judd Winick:
Hilo : 2 : Saving the Whole World. Random House Books for Young Readers. 2016.
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Hilo : 2 : Saving the Whole World by Judd Winick
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