Book Blog – THE TRUE MEANING OF SMEKDAY by Simon Rex

This week is all about Middle Grade (Hooray for MG!!). Obviously, this is a genre near’n’dear to my heart and my keyboard. One of the very best MG novels out there is THE TRUE MEANING OF SMEKDAY by Adam Rex. Here’s a synopsis from the publisher:

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.

This book is quirky, exciting, innovative, and a ball. Honestly, I’ve no clue why it’s not in every 5^th to 7^th grader’s backpack (or yours, for that matter). In one word, this book is FUN. The world Rex creates is just a vivid and deep as any adult or YA novel out there. His characters are charming, funny, complex, and charge off the page. Honestly, everyone should pick this sucker up and figure out what Smekday means to them.