Eight-year-old Thaddeus is jealous of his new baby sister, Maddie, and wants nothing to do with her until he realizes she’s a gateway for an alien invasion. His first clue: her single syllable babble (“ga”) is always vocalized in strings of prime numbers. When the aliens finally emerge—from small pods that Maddie throws up—they turn out to be “missionaries of smiles and happy feelings.” This is a deep disappointment to Thaddeus. Meanwhile, the government locks Maddie away. Thaddeus is more than willing to exploit his parents’ resulting distress for personal gain. But then he recognizes the look on his sister’s face in her isolation room as one all too familiar to him: loneliness. First published in the New York Times Magazine, Gene Luen Yang’s smart, funny graphic novel is hilarious from its first page (“my mother’s womb is a Trojan horse”) to its last. Smiles and happy feelings indeed. (Age 9 and older)

From the pages of the New York Times and the pen of Printz Award winner Gene Luen Yang comes a tale of math, aliens, and new siblings.

Thaddeus doesn’t like his new sister (she’s not that smart— and she gets all the attention). He likes her even less when he discovers that she’s an inter-dimensional conduit for peace-loving aliens (who are totally lame—all they want to do is knit socks for the homeless and have sing-a-longs!). But what’s even worse is that no one will believe him about any of this! How is he ever going manage to grow up to become the President of Earth?

First serialized in the New York Times Magazine, Prime Baby is a laugh-out-loud look at sibling rivalry.