Lightning Bugs and Aliens reminds me that the best coming-of-age novels are always, at their heart, about the education of the heart — how we learn to understand others, to bear loss, to hold onto friendship across the distances that society insists on maintaining.
Babka’s five protagonists — thirteen years old in the summer of 1960, in a small Ohio town full of Cold War anxiety and science fiction dreams — are charming individually and genuinely moving as a group. The alien-hunting adventure is delightful; the deeper themes of race and friendship are handled with the kind of quiet care that makes a book lastingly valuable.
The dedication to the son of Mississippi sharecroppers Babka knew as a child is itself a kind of testament. A lovely, honest book.
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