Short&Sweet Post 1: The True Meaning of Smekday

Due to time restraints which prevent my blogging as much as I'd like to -- by which I mean children who either read everything I post, or who actively interrupt every fourth thought -- I'm going for short and sweet on the blog these days. Like chocolate truffles infused with orange flavor.Or chocolate-covered cherries; those are good, too. I also like toffees. I'm not fond of chocolate-on-chocolate, but I'll eat them if they're chilled. Mint and chocolate is always a good combination -- especially an Andes Mint Ice Cream we discovered a few years ago. Hm, it seems I've wandered into a high-calorie fantasy, brought on no doubt by my recent switch to sensible eating habits. 

Back to the original topic, I hope to blog more often, in smaller portions. A lot like how I'm eating these days. Except without all the bonbons.

The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex (aimed at upper elementary and middle schoolers) was a serendipitous discovery. "Serendipity," as I defined it to my kids, means "a happy accident," and that's how I regard this book. Either Addi or Stuart brought it home from the library, having pulled it off the shelf at random. The premise didn't look very rollicking at first glance.

The year is 2013, and Earth has been taken over by aliens called the Boov. They've renamed the planet "Smekland" after their glorious Captain Smek who conquered the new land. Since the Boov decide they have need of most of North America, they order all Americans to board rocket pods and head to Florida.

Eleven-year-old Gratuity (her friends call her "Tip"), who watched the aliens abduct her mother, decides she'll drive to Florida instead. But she crashes somewhere outside Pittsburgh, and ends up in the company of one a Boov who seems to be on the run from his own kind. When Gratuity finds out why, she also finds out that there are other, scarier aliens to worry about.

So now she has to save the world.

Yeah, so it didn't look like a great read, especially for middle schoolers... until I actually started reading it. It's absolutely hilarious. The alien, for instance. Gratuity asks his name, and he replies, "Forto be saying my name you must have two heads. I haveto taken as my Smekland name, J.Lo." So for the entire book, Gratuity refers to this blue eight-legged frog-faced alien as "J.Lo." In Florida, they hide out in the Happy Mouse Kingdom, an alternate-reality Disneyworld. All the humans have been relocated to Arizona because, it turns out, the Boov like oranges. "Wait, they eat the oranges?" says Gratuity, who knows J.Lo's odd ideas about what constitutes food. "No," says someone else. "I think they wear them."

They travel to Roswell, New Mexico (via a flying car) where they find out that something really DID happen all those years ago. The story also -- in case you didn't catch it -- partially retells the story of the Western conquest of the New World. But Rex never lets his message overtake his story.

I've read the book twice. I don't know how many times Addi and Stuart have read it. (And Daphne's managed to get through the first 50 pages, which as far as she's concerned puts her in with the big kids.) This is definitely one that will stick around in the Household Library. Which it shouldn't be doing right now, because it's overdue at the Public Library.

-- SJ

P.S. Um, I intend for future Short&Sweet Posts to be actually, you know, short.