Well, the best book I have read in a very long time has to be The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex. This book was allegedly the basis for recent Dreamworks flop Home, but the single biggest flaw of that movie was the way it handled the source material.
At least half the story was completely omitted (including most of the really good parts), and the rest of it was changed around to the point where one might wonder why Dreamworks even bothered to buy the rights for it at all. Home might be called a mildly entertaining movie in its own right - but next to the book, it completely pales.
In case you hadn't guessed, it's the book I'm going to talk about here. The True Meaning of Smekday is a story mostly told by 14 year old girl Gratuity 'Tip' Tucci, who has been given the task of writing an essay on what Smekday means to her. Smekday, for the uninitiated, is the name of the most important holiday in Boov culture - named after heroic Commander Smek, whose discovery and conquest of the planet Smekworld ('Earth', to its primitive inhabitants) is considered the best thing to happen to Boovkind in a long time.
To clarify, the Boov are a race of aliens who were chased off their home planet by other, more aggressive aliens.
It turns out that Gratuity's personal Smekday story is somewhat unusual. Her mother was one of the first humans who were taken by the Boov and relocated to the new human reservation of Florida, leaving Gratuity to fend for herself and ultimately try to drive the family car to Florida on her own. On the way, she befriends a Boov outcast who, as the natives of Smekworld cannot easily pronounce Boov names, has adopted the human name 'J. Lo'. Yeah.
The result is an epic journey with more non-stop hilarity than you can shake a stick at, but the real highlights have to be J. Lo's occasional comic book style contributions which provide insight on the peculiar history and culture of the Boov. I was able to hunt down his brief overview of the Boov's early experiments with space travel - a project which owes a lot to Boovworld's most common farm animal, the Long-eared Koobish!
I could talk about The True Meaning of Smekday all night, but it's hard to say much more without throwing in some spoilers. So I'll just say this:
No matter if you've seen the movie or not, read the book. The book is amazing. You'll thank me.
At least half the story was completely omitted (including most of the really good parts), and the rest of it was changed around to the point where one might wonder why Dreamworks even bothered to buy the rights for it at all. Home might be called a mildly entertaining movie in its own right - but next to the book, it completely pales.
In case you hadn't guessed, it's the book I'm going to talk about here. The True Meaning of Smekday is a story mostly told by 14 year old girl Gratuity 'Tip' Tucci, who has been given the task of writing an essay on what Smekday means to her. Smekday, for the uninitiated, is the name of the most important holiday in Boov culture - named after heroic Commander Smek, whose discovery and conquest of the planet Smekworld ('Earth', to its primitive inhabitants) is considered the best thing to happen to Boovkind in a long time.
To clarify, the Boov are a race of aliens who were chased off their home planet by other, more aggressive aliens.
It turns out that Gratuity's personal Smekday story is somewhat unusual. Her mother was one of the first humans who were taken by the Boov and relocated to the new human reservation of Florida, leaving Gratuity to fend for herself and ultimately try to drive the family car to Florida on her own. On the way, she befriends a Boov outcast who, as the natives of Smekworld cannot easily pronounce Boov names, has adopted the human name 'J. Lo'. Yeah.
The result is an epic journey with more non-stop hilarity than you can shake a stick at, but the real highlights have to be J. Lo's occasional comic book style contributions which provide insight on the peculiar history and culture of the Boov. I was able to hunt down his brief overview of the Boov's early experiments with space travel - a project which owes a lot to Boovworld's most common farm animal, the Long-eared Koobish!
I could talk about The True Meaning of Smekday all night, but it's hard to say much more without throwing in some spoilers. So I'll just say this:
No matter if you've seen the movie or not, read the book. The book is amazing. You'll thank me.
