February 19, 2026, by Dreamland Staff for the Seward Folly

“Beautyland” 

By Marie-Helene Bertino

One quote appeared over and over again, taped into the scrapbook, stuck to my locker door, even printed onto a DIY T-shirt I made on our family computer, carefully lining up the transfer paper and praying it wouldn’t peel in the wash. It was from the short-lived television show My So-Called Life: 

“People are always saying you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite thing, like a toaster. Like you know what it is even. But every so often I’ll have, like, a moment, where just being myself in my life right where I am is, like, enough.” 

Ugh. The feelings. There is a logical part of me that tells me this is cringe, but stick with me. Finding those relics of my younger self reminded me how desperately I wanted to feel seen (and, I suppose, still do). And how powerful it was when I did. That electric relief of recognition. The sense that someone, somewhere, understood. That I was not alone. 

The book I want to share with you this week brought me right back to that feeling. 

In “Beautyland,” Marie-Helene Bertino introduces us to our main character, Adina, at the precise moment of her birth in 1977, a moment that coincides exactly with Carl Sagan and NASA sending a golden record into space, a time capsule meant to offer distant life-forms a portrait of life on Earth. 

Adina is an unusual child, different from her peers in ways she or those around her can’t quite name yet. At the age of four, the reason for that otherworldliness becomes clear when her mother drags home a fax machine from the side of the road. After Adina sends a fax into the void, she receives a reply from her “superiors” on the distant Planet Rice Cricket. Through these transmissions, Adina learns that she is not entirely human but an alien sent to Earth to observe and report back on life here. 

The novel follows Adina through her childhood in Philadelphia, through her gangly teenage years, and beyond. Along the way, readers are made privy to Adina’s fax reports, and watching how those reports change over time is a tender experience. 

An early report from Adina had me chuckling. It goes like this: 

“Human beings did not think their lives were challenging enough so they invented roller coasters. A roller coaster is a series of problems on a steel track. Upon encountering real problems, human beings compare their lives to riding a roller coaster, even though they invented roller coasters to be fun things to do on their days off.” 

As Adina grows older, those observations deepen, giving way to reflections on loneliness, grief, and love. One particular fax tugged hard at my heartstrings: 

“Grief is a bad mirror. It shows you manipulated images of yourself, your will, and the future. It cannot show you how the small work you do will add up to yourself. Inch by inch.” 

It’s a book that understands how strange it is to be alive at all. 

Reading “Beautyland” felt like returning to that teenage relief of recognition. I found myself underlining quotes again and again, reminded how special it is to feel, even briefly, that no matter how alien we may feel at times, we are not alone. 

I loved this quirky little book, and I hope I’ve enticed some readers out there to check it out. Come chat with me about it at the bookstore! 

And if I haven’t totally sold you on this one yet, let me leave you with one last fax from Adina:

“Dogs,” she faxes, “are the best we can do.” 

Oh, my gosh, doesn’t it just make your heart pitter-patter? 

Happy reading, 

Jess