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? Or maybe with Christmas Eve, when huge, bizarre spaceships descended on 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 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.

Adam Rex is the illustrator of The Dirty Cowboy by Amy Timberlake, Ste-e-e-e-eamboat A-Comin’ by Jill Esbaum, and Small Beauties by Elvira Woodruff. He wrote and illustrated Tree Ring Circus and the New York Times best-seller Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich. Adam lives with his wife in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.