DNF - close to nothing makes sense about this book. Maybe that's because I was trying to read the German translation, maybe the original isn't as weird, but... While the story itself seems to be enjoyably slow and quiet, I could not get the slightest grasp on the emotional level. If the species is so soft and full of love, why are they shunning ET? If they all wanted to go home so badly, why are they just throwing out ET, without making a real stop on their home world? If ET can communicate with any sort of plant, why does he still not know anything about humans? And all their procedures seem to be normal for him, but they are incomprehensible for humans and so the reader has no chance to ever understand what the heck is going on. I read a fourth of this book and when thinks still didn't get any clearer, when the worldbuilding kept contradicting itself, I gave up. No idea who thought this might be a book for kids. I'm an adult, skilled at reading sophisticated, stick in the butt type scholarly texts, and still THIS is harder to read.