The True Meaning of Smekday

Gratuity Tucci tells the story of Smekday, the day aliens took over the earth, and the year following Smekday for a time capsule. The aliens turn out to be less scary than thought initially, but they in turn are followed by some really scary aliens who want to take over the earth from the first aliens (got that?) A fun little story.

PERFECT. Smart, funny sci-fi that tipped its hat to sci-fi conventions and then blew them in the dust. Also the audiobook reader, Bahni Turpin, was simply perfect. Not only did she do a wonderful job with the book's human narrator, she was also so so great at weird alien voices. The only thing was I was not expecting there to be so many threats toward cats which I cannot handle in books!! So FYI this book has a lot of cat endangerment and it's very scary for cat-lovers!! TIGGER WARNING (that was a typo but it seems appropriate so I'm leaving it)

This was a Christmas gift for my 11-year-old son. He finished it a few weeks ago and loved it. So then I needed another read-aloud book for my daughter (age 9). She was soon entranced by the story and occasionally my son would pop by during a reading to re-live some of the humor. The story concerns a young girl named Gratuity (“Tip” to her friends) who is writing a school paper assignment (the title of the book). Smekday is a holiday created (or co-opted really) by the alien invaders known as the Boov. Tip's mom (along with most of the other Americans) gets kidnapped by the Boov and relocated to Florida. Shortly afterwards, Tip befriends a renegade Boov who had adopted the name J. Lo. J. Lo, a male by the way, is hiding from his fellow Boov because of a screw-up he's responsible for. Much of the humor in the book stems from the relationship between Tip and J. Lo. It's funny stuff. They're soon on a road trip together.

Once again, whenever I informed my daughter that I was going to stop reading for the night, she begged me to read just a little bit more. Note: there are several fun illustrations within the book too.