Synopses & Reviews
It all starts with a school essay. When twelve-year-old Gratuity ("Tip") Tucci is assigned to write five pages on "The True Meaning of Smekday" for the National Time Capsule contest, she's not sure where to begin.
When her mom started telling everyone about the messages aliens were sending through a mole on the back of her neck?
Maybe on Christmas Eve, when huge, bizarre spaceships descended on the Earth and the aliens — called Boov — abducted her mother?
Or when the Boov declared Earth a colony, renamed it "Smekland" (in honor of glorious Captain Smek), and forced all Americans to relocate to Florida via rocketpod?
In any case, Gratuity's story is much, much bigger than the assignment. It involves her unlikely friendship with a renegade Boov mechanic named J.Lo.; a futile journey south to find Gratuity's mother at the Happy Mouse Kingdom; a cross-country road trip in a hovercar called Slushious; and an outrageous plan to save the Earth from yet another alien invasion.
Fully illustrated with "photos," drawings, newspaper clippings, and comics sequences, this is a hilarious, perceptive, genre-bending novel by a remarkable new talent.
Synopsis
The hilarious, genre-bending novel from bestselling author Adam rex that inspired the blockbuster feature film Home -- fully illustrated with "photos," drawings, newspaper clippings, and comics sequences. When twelve-year-old Gratuity ("Tip") Tucci is assigned to write five pages on "The True Meaning of Smekday" for the National Time Capsule contest, she's not sure where to begin; when her mom started telling everyone about the messages aliens were sending through a mole on the back of her neck? Maybe on Christmas Eve, when huge bizarre spaceships descended on Earth and the aliens -- called Boov -- abducted her mother? Or when the Boov declared Earth a colony, renamed it "Smekland" (in honor of glorious Captain Smek), and forced all Americans to relocate to Florida via rocketpod?
In any case, Gratuity's story is much, much bigger than the assignment. It involves her unlikely friendship with a renegade Boov mechanic named J.Lo; a futile journey south to find Gratuity's mother at the Happy Mouse Kingdom; a cross-country road trip in a hovercar called Slushious; and an outrageous plan to save the Earth from yet another alien invasion.
Synopsis
Fully illustrated with photos, drawings, newspaper clippings, and comic sequences, this original debut novel by a noted illustrator is a hilarious, perceptive, and genre-bending story about a 12-year-old girl who writes an essay six months after an alien race has taken over Earth.
About the Author
Adam Rex grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, the middle of three children. He was neither the smart one (older brother) or the cute one (younger sister), but he was the one who could draw. He took a lot of art classes as a kid, trying to learn to draw better, and started painting when he was 11. Later he got a BFA from the University of Arizona, and met his physicist wife, Marie (who is both the smart and cute one)....
He likes animals, spacemen, Mexican food, Ethiopian food, monsters, puppets, comic books, 19th-century art, skeletons, bugs, and robots. His first picture book, The Dirty Cowboy by Amy Timberlake, was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2003. His picture book Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich, a collection of stories about monsters and their problems, was a New York Times bestseller. The year 2007 saw the release of his first novel, The True Meaning of Smekday. His second, a book for teens and adults called Fat Vampire, will be published in July 2010. Garlic and crosses are useless against Adam. Sunlight has been shown to be at least moderately effective. A silver bullet does the trick. Pretty much any bullet, really.