Author: Erin Entrada Kelly
Genre: Fiction
Prime Ages: 11-14
Prime Audiences: Junior High/Middle School Students Dealing with Family Conflicts, Anger Problems, Personal Short-Comings, or Just Feeling Out of Place; Adolescents Interested in Space Exploration
Publisher: Greenwillow Books
Publication Year: 2020
We're all in orbit, circling each other's lives, navigating the spaces of life, taking each day as a new frontier. But the universe is not always a kind place, not even the spaces we inhabit within our own thoughts. But it's within those spaces where the greatest discoveries can be made, the ones that make navigating all the other spaces easier.
Erin Entrada Kelly's fantastic middle-grade novel We Dream of Space is about three siblings, Cash, Fitch, and Bird, and their tumultuous month of January 1986, set against the backdrop of the anticipation of the Challenger shuttle launch and its subsequent tragedy. Readers will get these characters, along with the other characters within their orbits, and Kelly's use of a changing third person point of view between the siblings gives readers a full view of the Nelson Thomas's universe. And while this is definitely not a "happily ever after" story, the after is hopeful— and that's enough to make Cash, Fitch, and Bird's spaces, individually and collectively, happier places to navigate.
Read We Dream of Space!
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