The True Meaning of Smekday

The True Meaning of Smekday (2007) is a middle-grade science fiction adventure novel by Adam Rex. It is multimodal, containing news articles, assignment prompts, letters, photographs, and comic strips. The novel follows Gratuity “Tip” Tucci as she recounts living through an extraterrestrial occupation by “the Boov” and attacks from the Gorg. A sympathetic Boov named J.Lo, Tip, and her cat, Pig, survive a series of misadventures to find Tip’s abducted mother and reclaim Earth for humanity. The novel explores themes of The Impact of Colonization from a Child’s Perspective, The Nature of Cross-Cultural Understanding, and The Complexity of Living Through and Recording Major Historical Events.

Rex has written and illustrated many novels, including the sequel, Smek for President (2015). The novel was a 2007 finalist for the Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction. The audiobook won the 2011 Odyssey Award. It was adapted into the 2015 DreamWorks film Home.

This guide refers to the 2007 Hyperion Books hardback.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature depictions of racism. Additionally, the source text includes outdated, racist terms to refer to Indigenous communities, which the guide replicates only in direct quotes. 

Plot Summary

Eighth-grader Gratuity “Tip” Tucci must write an essay about the true meaning of Smekday, the day “the Boov,” an extraterrestrial species, landed on Earth. The winning essay will go into a 100-year time capsule. 

Part 1 is Tip’s first attempt. She describes “Moving Day,” the day the Boov told all humans to relocate to a “Human Preserve” in Florida. Her mother, Lucy, was abducted, and Tip lived alone with her cat, Pig. She drove to Florida with Pig. On the way, she crashed Lucy’s car and encountered a Boov named J.Lo, who wanted to form a truce. In exchange for carpooling, J.Lo fixed Tip’s car and transformed it into a hover car. J.Lo said Earth had been renamed Smekland, and Christmas was named Smekday after Captain Smek. Tip concludes her essay by saying this is how she learned Smekday’s meaning. Tip receives a C+ because she wrote about what the day meant to the Boov rather than humans. Her teacher invites her to redo the essay.

Part 2 is Tip’s second try. She starts before the Boov landed. Her mother claimed extraterrestrials abducted her and put a mole on her neck. The mole started glowing periodically, and she chanted in her sleep. On Christmas Eve, the mole glowed brightly, and Lucy walked in a trance to a newly landed Boov ship, which abducted her. The Boov occupied human towns, banished humans to the Human Preserves, and easily defeated humans who fought back.

As Tip drove with J.Lo, she noticed a speech pattern her mother had. She realized Lucy was abducted to be J.Lo’s “tutor.” J.Lo told Tip they abducted her again to remove the mole and relocate her to the preserve. In Florida, a Boovcop pulled them over, and J.Lo hid, as he was wanted for broadcasting their location to their enemies, the Gorg. In Orlando, a sign told humans to gather beneath the Snow Queen’s Castle in the Happy Mouse Kingdom. Tip went there alone.

There, she encountered boys in tunnels who said that after the Boov discovered oranges, they changed the Human Preserve to Arizona. J.Lo tracked down Tip and said the Boov discovered them. A boy named Christian helped them escape. The Boov stopped chasing them when they saw a massive purple Gorg ship. J.Lo began breaking free of thinking like how the elite HighBoov socialized him. He thought the Boov shouldn’t have colonized Earth. Tip realized that the Boovs are “just people,” not evil villains.

In the narrative present, the Time Capsule Committee tells Tip her essay won and encourages her to write about her experiences under the Gorg invasion. In Part 3, Tip does so in a private diary but says no one can read it until she is dead.

On their drive west, J.Lo learned about the nature of family, and Tip learned about the Boov and Gorg’s histories. The Gorg’s species are “Nimrog,” and they were all clones of a single Nimrog named “Gorg.” Tip and J.Lo’s car, Slushious, crashed in Roswell when they swerved to avoid hitting a child. Tip disguised J.Lo under a sheet and said he was her brother. They met a group of conspiracy theorists including a woman named Vicki.

They tried to fix Slushious, but vital Boov parts were broken. Boov ships and the big Gorg ship fought. J.Lo explained that Gorg launched teleporting booths to the surface, and the Boov destroyed them so Gorg couldn’t teleport out. Gorg took Boov’s teleporting and cloning technology and improved it so it could teleport and clone complex matter. They saw wrecked and damaged Boov ships and a damaged teleporter. J.Lo used a faulty part from Slushious to explode and distract the Gorg so the Boov could escape.

The next morning, someone Vicki called “Chief Shouting Bear”—a Diné man whose real name was Frank—found a spaceship. He showed Tip the ship made of papier-mâché. J.Lo found the teleporter in Chief’s junkyard; he salvaged it from the crash site. Tip wanted to barter for it and said he might trade it for Slushious.

Tip and J.Lo spent the night at Vicki’s. She was racist toward Chief and didn’t want them returning. When they went to feed Pig, she followed them, spouting conspiracy theories. A Gorg machine cornered them, demanding they turn over all cats. They denied having one. When they returned to Chief, the Gorg was looking for him. Chief hid Pig and the teleporter. The Gorg interrogated Tip.

Chief tried to defend her, but they knocked him out, injuring him. Tip took Chief to the Roswellians for help, and J.Lo looked for a car to steal. The Roswellians thought Vicki betrayed Chief to the Gorg. Tip returned to Chief’s junkyard for Pig and saw Vicki pinning her down and threatening to give her to the Gorg. J.Lo, undisguised, pretended to be a Gorg emissary collecting cats.

With Vicki gone, J.Lo took Tip to the hidden teleporter. They discovered a koobish flock, a Boov animal. Tip realized a Boov pod crashed in 1947, and Chief found it. She went back to the fake ship and removed the papier-mâché. A real ship was underneath. They salvaged what they needed to fix Slushious and left for Arizona.

In Flagstaff, Tip registered Lucy’s name with the Lost List. J.Lo tried to repair the teleporter. He theorized that the Gorg used their ship as a massive computer to store all the data they needed for cloning and teleporting. Tip learned that a human leader, Daniel Landry, was cooperating with the Gorg. J.Lo and Tip knew the Gorg were biding time before enslaving and killing all humans. Chief and other Roswellians arrived after they evacuated Roswell due to the Gorg’s destruction. 

The Lost List found Lucy in Tucson, working with Landry. Tip and J.Lo, disguised, went to Tucson with Pig. Tip was surprised to hear that her mother was now a community leader. In private, she told her about J.Lo’s identity. They met Landry, who said the Boov were a bigger problem than the Gorg. Tip’s mother seemed to agree with Landry; she wondered if she could trust her.

Tip visited Landry to convince him of the Gorg threat. He insisted working with them was best. The Gorg were planning a community festival. Landry and Lucy thought they’d bring the humans useful technology, but J.Lo and Tip thought they’d use it to round up and kill humans.

Chief arrived in Tucson to fight back against the Gorg. The Boov resistance was on its last legs, and the Gorg pushed up the festival. J.Lo wanted to stay with his new family. Lucy tried to talk to Landry, but he wouldn’t see her. Gorg entered the casino where they lived, looking for Tip and the teleporter. Lucy claimed she was Tip and was abducted. When the Gorg sneezed around Lucy, Tip realized they had a deadly allergy to cats.

J.Lo fixed the teleporter, and Tip teleported to the nearest receiver in Landry’s office. She overheard him planning with the Gorg. He was tricking humans into going to the festival to accumulate power and was angry they abducted Lucy. Tip, J.Lo, and Pig teleported to the Gorg receiver with the biggest signal. They landed in a bathroom. Tip investigated outside and saw they were in the Happy Mouse Kingdom. J.Lo used the teleporter’s computer to find out the Gorg ship stored Lucy as data. Tip and the other boys fought the Gorg, and J.Lo used the teleporter to clone Pig thousands of times and bring Lucy back. The Gorg had a massive allergic reaction and retreated from Earth.

Tip found the original Pig, and they returned to Tucson. Landry lied and said he heroically defeated the Gorg. The Boov left, but J.Lo stayed. Tip saw how fame negatively affected Landry’s life and decided never to tell anyone about her role in the events.

A news clipping 100 years later announces Tip’s death at 113, the same day the time capsule was unearthed. She is survived by her descendants and J.Lo.