Holy Jim Parsons Batman! SMEKDAY's going to be a movie??!!

So I'm just mindlessly perusing Twitter this afternoon when Adam Rex tweets the following:

Here is the link to the official announcement Adam put in his tweet. If you don't want to read the whole thing, this is the gist of it: Dreamworks is producing the movie. Jim Parsons is playing the voice of J. Lo (the alien, not the singer) and Rihanna is playing the voice of Gratuity. It will be released at the end of 2014.

I have made it quite clear in every social media outlet I can as well as my own classroom that The True Meaning of Smekday is one of the funniest, most endearing books in all of children's literature. And Bahni Turpin gave probably the best performance in the history of audiobooks (that's right Harry Potter and Jim Dale lovers, you heard me). So much so that I pimp this book out to anyone looking for a good audiobook recommendation.

It was through my own persistence, and well, a small bribe from Adam Rex by way of pouring chocolate syrup over his head that my students voted it 6th grade March Book Madness champion at my school over THE HUNGER GAMES this year. That is not a small feat - especially given the fact the The Hunger Games movie came out around the time of the competition.

Back on May 1, this was the #1 book I put on my Top Ten Tuesday list for books I want to see made into a movie. So yeah, to say that I squealed with delight when I found out that not only would this book be made into a movie but that JIM freaking PARSONS was going to play the alien Boov J.Lo???? Squealing is perhaps an understatement. You see, J.Lo the

This man might already be an alien so he'll be a great voice of one :)

alien is my favorite character in all of literature. And Jim Parsons plays my favorite character in all of TV sitcom. So the fact that he's going to be the voice of my favorite book character, well, 2014 can't get here soon enough!

More so than even The Hunger Games, this is a movie I hope producers get right and they don't change the story so much that it's almost unrecognizable. I want movie-goers to see what endeared me and many of my students to Adam Rex's quirky humor and not create some heavily-produced, faux version of the original story. Jim Parsons, I know you're a comedic genius and all, but if you're reading this (because I'm sure he reads book blogs all the time, yo), please listen to the audiobook and take some notes from Bahni Turpin. Your performance will absolutely be better for it.

(As a side note, even though the character J.Lo in the story is an alien and not the actual singer, how hilarious would that be if the REAL J.Lo wrote and performed a song for the movie? Hey Dreamworks, make it happen!) 


Read my interview with Adam Rex about The True Meaning of Smekday