This is a lovely little book written by Jomny Sun, an alien with a Twitter account and a charming take on life on Earth.
In real life, Jomny is Jonathan Sun, one of those geniuses who is a writer, illustrator, architect, engineer etc. In addition to his sweet Twitter account, he helps create an online newsletter called Bouncy Castle that brings sunshine directly to your inbox, along with Twitter magician Darth. I might be a fan.
The book itself is a longer version of Jomny’s story of his time on earth, a graphic novel describing his relationship with Earthlings, his fellow aliebns, and himself. The book itself is filled with simple and clean drawings, done entirely in black and white. I have seen online that there are quite a few people who have coloured in the drawings. Jomny himself seems please about this, but I am too old and I am horrified by people colouring in books.
While the book is quite short, I found that it was quite dense in terms of the number of ideas Jomny explores. He muses largely on the nature of connection and of art, in essence. I suspect it is a little twee for some, with it’s deliberate misspellings and brief observations of line that seem designed for one of those terrible “type yes if you agree” Facebook posts that my cousin CANNOT STOP POSTING *ahem*, but the little bits of hummer found in the book temper that for me.
“never be sad abot the past, it is alredy hapened and you canot change it, instead, focus on wat truly matters: being sad abot the future”
Overall I found it quite charming, wistful and filled with feeling. Jomny is on earth to learn about humans, but yearns to make connections and to take care of the creatures he meets on Earth. He is misunderstood by his fellow aliebns; he is profoundly lonely but is filled with love and trying so hard to understand both himself and the world around him. This explicit examination of feelings felt so unusual to me but it certainly made me think a little harder about my place in this world; I seem to be moved to emotion more easily as I age, and this book made me recognize how alone I feel much of the time, and how it is ok to feel like that, because most people probably feel that way. What are you going to do about it?
