54 pages • 1 hour read
Adam RexThe True Meaning of Smekday
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Gratuity “Tip” Tucci
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism.
Tip is the eighth-grade protagonist and first-person narrator of the novel. The photos Tip takes and tapes into her narrative show her as a young, biracial Black girl with space buns. Part 1 is Tip’s first, unsuccessful attempt to write an essay for a 100-year time capsule about “Smekday,” the day an extraterrestrial species named the Boov landed on Earth. Part 2 is her second, successful essay about the same topic. Part 3 is her private diary entry about a second invasion by the extraterrestrial Gorg and the vital role of Tip and her allies in making both extraterrestrial species leave Earth. Her retellings play a central role in The Complexity of Living Through and Recording Major Historical Events.
At the novel’s start, Tip is self-sufficient because she has to care for both Lucy and herself. She eventually tells Lucy that everything works out in their life and Lucy never has “to worry or think about it or do a thing” (41), because Tip always cleans up her messes. While this is more responsibility than a child should have to bear, it gives her the confidence and cleverness to get out of dangerous and stressful situations throughout the novel, keeping herself and 
