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Cover of The True Meaning of Smekday

How long does it take to read The True Meaning of Smekday?

Adam Rex

The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex takes about 7 hours 45 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 7 hours 45 minutes

A weekend read

First published 2001. 423 pages, about 116,325 words. Written for children.

16 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 12 hours 56 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 7 hours 45 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 4 hours 51 minutes

The page count is the median across 16 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

It all starts with a school essay. When twelve-year-old Gratuity ("Tip") Tucci is assigned to write five pages on "The True Meaning of Smekday" for the National Time Capsule contest, she's not sure where to begin. When her mom started telling everyone about the messages aliens were sending through a mole on the back of her neck? Maybe on Christmas Eve, when huge, bizarre spaceships descended on the Earth and the aliens - called Boov - abducted her mother? Or when the Boov declared Earth a colony, renamed it "Smekland" (in honor of glorious Captain Smek), and forced all Americans to relocate to Florida via rocketpod? In any case, Gratuity's story is much, much bigger than the assignment. It involves her unlikely friendship with a renegade Boov mechanic named J.Lo.; a futile journey south to find Gratuity's mother at the Happy Mouse Kingdom; a cross-country road trip in a hovercar called Slushious; and an outrageous plan to save the Earth from yet another alien invasion. Fully illustrated with "photos," drawings, newspaper clippings, and comics sequences, this is a hilarious, perceptive, genre-bending novel by a remarkable new talent.

Subjects: Children's fiction, Missing persons, fiction, Automobile travel, fiction, Extraterrestrial beings, fiction, Science fiction, Humorous stories

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