March 15, 2024
Grades 3-6 Award-winning author Torres (Stef Soto Taco Queen, 2017) offers here an engaging book about family, friendship, and science. Three middle-schoolers see a chance to improve their lives when they hear a meteorite has landed in Imperial Valley, California. Vega Lucero and her cousin Mila want to find the meteorite, sell it, and use the money to keep the family store. Jasper wants to impress his father--a shambolic dreamer, who drags him across the nation to find meteorites, only to sell fake meteorites at trade shows. Vega knows the desert, while Jasper knows rocks. After meeting by chance, they decide to work together, each hoping to find the meteorite first. In the dead of night, they sneak into the desert. Together, they face coyotes, scorpions, a flash flood, and the vast desert darkness. Vega and Mila read as Latinx, while Jasper reads as white. Torres writes about sensitive topics such as mortality, parental irresponsibility, and anxiety in a touching manner. Mila's and Jasper's story arcs feel unresolved, but the adventurous quality of the plot proves captivating and very entertaining.
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May 1, 2024
Summer plans take a turn when a chunk of sky lands at a girl's feet. Vega is a headstrong Latine girl growing up on the edge of the Salton Sea in California's Imperial Valley. She's trying to get through summer vacation with her quiet, perpetually anxious prima, Mila, who was sent from Los Angeles to stay for the summer to keep her out of trouble. Though Mila's anxieties are more apparent, Vega has worries of her own--about her older brother (who's moving away for college), Tata (who's recovering from his broken hip), and whether the family business, the Lone Star Market, can stay afloat. When the universe dumps a space rock at her feet--and she learns how valuable it might be--Vega sneaks off on a quest to find more meteorites in the barren desert just beyond her home, accompanied by Jasper, the son of a rockhound with his own hidden motives. Mila secretly follows them. As the desert throws its worst at the three compatriots, from scorpions to coyotes to flash-flooding arroyos, the narrative shifts among Vega's first-person perspective and Jasper's and Mila's third-person views. In order to find their meteorite treasure and get home safely, the kids must share their baggage, both literal and figurative. The fast-paced read is a classic summer coming-of-age story with plenty of adventure and heart. As in all good quests, the story's true treasures are the relationships formed along the way. (Fiction. 9-14)
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May 1, 2024
Gr 3-6-When a meteorite falls, three middle schoolers reluctantly join together to find it. Each has a motivation-raising money for a grandparent's medical bills, appeasing a rock-hunting father, or quelling their anxiety. Told in alternating viewpoints, two female cousins and their new male friend have an eventful night in the desert looking for a meteorite while dodging natural disasters and wildlife. This novel weaves together adventure, friendship, a representation of Latinx culture, traditional constellation lore, and a small amount of space science. Here readers find well-developed characters with distinct voices and a tightly paced, fast-moving plot that harmoniously blend into a heartwarming, energetic novel. Some plot lines are not as fleshed out as others, as the ambitious novel navigates three narrators and their separate backstories and motivations. That, however, does not detract substantially from the overall effect. VERDICT A multiple-viewpoint realistic novel with broad appeal recommended for most upper elementary, middle school, or public libraries.-Elizabeth Nicolai
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