David better known to his friends as Scrub is a long way from his sunny Florida home the summer before his seventh-grade year, having been dumped by his ultrabusy parents in gloomy Washington State. He stays with his grandmother, Sunshine, who runs a dumpy inn in her huge home called the Intergalactic Bed & Breakfast. Scrub soon realizes that not all is as it seems at the B and B when he accidentally walks into a restricted restroom that has a urinal on the ceiling. Also, his grandmother's guests struggle with the finer points of the English language and exhibit an otherworldly eccentricity. When a strange blue light from under his closet door wakes Scrub one night, he can no longer deny his suspicions about his grandmother and her borders. The plot is nothing new, but Smith, a teacher and screenplay writer, delivers a first novel about being a stranger in a strange land that many middle-schoolers will find funny and relatable. Slade adds a few goofy touches in the black-and-white spot art.--Anderson, Eri. Copyright 2010 Booklist

David, aka Scrub, is horrified to squander the summer in tiny, boring Forest Glen, WA, with the grandmother he's never met. Grandma, who goes by the name Sunshine, runs the Intergalactic Bed & Breakfast, hosting a very bizarre clientele and a secret in which David is soon embroiled. Swanson mines all of the humor and tension of this light summer tale, imbuing both humans and aliens with distinctive voices. He is especially effective with the budding romance between David and Amy, a local girl who shows David that aliens have rights, too. Standard: Students will compare and contrast different ways of life and understand the factors contributing to individual differences. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(Science fiction. 9-13)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Scrub is spending the summer with the grandmother he barely knows in Washington State. Although he's surprised (and embarrassed) by the hokey space theme of her bed and breakfast, he soon gets an even bigger shock: the patrons are extraterrestrials. Humorous descriptions of the aliens and of Scrub's antics to evade the town's nosy sheriff enhance the accessible story. (c) Copyright 2011. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.