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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.

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  • Hi, welcome to the site. Is this a novel, a short story, or something else though? And in roughly which year did you read or see it? Jan 29, 2022 at 19:05
  • A short story in a textbook I think. I was about 7 when I read it. I always went back to it and remembered that after the story ended, there was a page of armadillo facts.
    – Chelsey
    Feb 6, 2022 at 21:52
  • I think I’m thinking of the same book - he had “hot cross bun hair” and no belly button but it’s driving me mad trying to work out the name of it.
    – Charlotte
    Nov 8, 2022 at 22:16

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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.

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  • I looked it up and it wasn't the story. Thank you for your response though.
    – Chelsey
    Feb 8, 2022 at 22:38

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