Children's story about an adopted orphan boy with weird hair, who turns out to be an alien

Question

The story is about a boy and his orphaned alien best friend. The boy's family adopted the alien boy (I think without knowing he was an alien). The alien boy goes to the human boy's school and is bullied because he has weird hair (blue or white, I can't remember). I think he had powers too.

Every night he stares up at the stars, feeling like his parents will come for him from out there. One day his parents arrive in a UFO and find him. He tells his best friend, who is distraught, that he never felt like he belonged and finally he knows why.

Answer 1

This sounds like a partial match to Half-Breed by Isaac Asimov. This was first published in Astonishing Stories, February 1940. It was also reprinted in "The Early Asimov" (1972) as part of a bookform collection of Asimov's early stories.

Half-Breed is the story of Max, a child of a type known as "Tweenie" because of his being a mix between (hence the 'tween) martian and human. They are tall and slim with a crest of very pale white hair. Tweenies are treated as subhuman and I think have no rights as people in society.

The other major protagonist in the story is Scanlon, a scientist who rescues Max from an assault/bullying by a gang of teenagers, and then adopts Max. Scanlon is working on a new, cheap device for atomic power generation and Max comes up with a solution. This work and the resulting sales mean that Scanlon becomes rich (I can't remember if Max, as a Tweenie can own anything and becomes rich too).

Scanlon then uses some of this money to adopt a female Tweenie as a partner for Max, and a couple of young Tweenie children. He then goes on to adopt all other homeless Tweenies and creates a town for them, where they can be people free from prejudice and discrimination, and works for their official government recognition.

Eventually it is revealed that the Tweenies have developed their own spacecraft and are about to leave Earth to colonize Venus as their own planet as they never felt at home on Earth.