In honor of Martian Fluxx, I'd like to pass on some kudos for a book I finished reading yesterday. Titled The True Meaning of Smekday, it's a hilarious memoir of a girl who was 11 when an alien race took over the Earth in 2013. (She started writing it as part of an assignment from her 8th grade teacher a couple of years later.) Its author, Adam Rex, is primarily known as an illustrator of children's books, written both by others and by himself. I also heartily his book Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich, and its sequel Frankenstein Takes the Cake. They are books of poetry about all the classic movie monsters. The poems are hilarious, and very appealing to children while containing humor that only adults may catch (and I don't mean because of sexual innuendos). The illustrations are equally delightful and show a broad range of artistic styles. The Sandwich book made the bestseller lists. I think it fits the "fair use" clause to quote one poem here: E.T.-Mail We assumed it was the case that in a place as big as space we' find some trace of other races with our scientific bases. When a signal was detected, it was not what we expected. In the subject line it pleaded, PLEASE REPLY -- ASSISTANCE NEEDED. SALUTATIONS TO YOUR HEALTH. PLEASE HELP ME TRANSFER ALL MY WEALTH INTO YOUR BANK ACCOUNT ON EARTH -- ELEVEN MILLION DOLLARS' WORTH. I NEED YOUR ANSWER RIGHT AWAY. PLEASE SEND A LETTER BACK TODAY (ALONG WITH FIFTY DOLLARS, PLEASE, TO PAY THE MONEY-TRANSFER FEES). We gasped -- a message from the stars! And then another came from Mars: NEED BIGGER, YELLOWER ANTENNAE? HAVE TOO FEW OR HAVE TOO MANY? LOSS OF VIGOR? LOUSY SLEEPER? OUR PRESCRIPTION DRUGS ARE *CHEAPER*!!!! We were noticing a pattern, when a bunch arrived from Saturn: FANCY WATCHES! CLICK AND SEE! and GET YOUR HYPERSCHOOL DEGREE. At SINGLES IN YOUR SECTOR!!! we disabled our detector. Then we emptied out the cache and dragged the letters to the trash. So, that's the fact we had to face: There's no intelligence in space. But that's okay -- for what it's worth, there isn't much of it on Earth. If you want to find the Frank books in the library, you probably need to look in the poetry section rather than the children's books. That's where I found them yesterday when I went to re-check them out. I found all 4 copies of Sandwich in the 811 section, so I did a very subversive act: I left one there and took the other 3, one to check out and two to display on top of shelves along with other Halloween-related books. That's where I first discovered it, after all, and it deserves to be seen at this time of year. Anyway, you can check out his website: www.adamrex.com. It has the same sort of humor you'll find in his books. Bryan