Plot Summary
The story is told in essay format, to be sent to a committee and put in a time capsule, to be opened in 100 years.
The protagonist is eleven-year-old Gratuity Tucci (sometimes nicknamed 'Tip'), who must survive on her own after her mother is abducted by aliens. The aliens, called Boov, arrive and take over the Earth, which they call Smekland after their leader, Captain Smek. Christmas, the day of the Boov's arrival on Earth, is renamed "Smekday".
On "Moving Day", all humans are required to relocate to Florida. Tip decides to drive instead of being transported by the Boov. She soon makes friends with a Boov, who calls himself J.Lo, and is actually very friendly. The two journey to Florida, but discover the Boov like oranges and told the humans to go to Arizona instead. They travel across the United States, running into all kinds of problems and adventures, including two organizations called B.O.O.B., a crazy Indian, cat allergies, and the fact that J.Lo accidentally summoned the Gorg, a more evil group of aliens. The Gorg have taken the Boov's old planet, Boovworld, and are looking to conquer Earth also. They want to eat their planet and enslave the humans. It is up to Tip and J.Lo to find Tip's mother, Lucy, and save the world.
Read more about this topic: The True Meaning Of Smekday
Famous quotes containing the words plot and/or summary:
“James’s great gift, of course, was his ability to tell a plot in shimmering detail with such delicacy of treatment and such fine aloofness—that is, reluctance to engage in any direct grappling with what, in the play or story, had actually “taken place”Mthat his listeners often did not, in the end, know what had, to put it in another way, “gone on.””
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments; and, as it is the shortest and most agreeable and summary feeling imaginable, the first moment of an universal republic would convert me into an advocate for single and uncontradicted despotism. The fact is, riches are power, and poverty is slavery all over the earth, and one sort of establishment is no better, nor worse, for a people than another.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)