Newbery Medalist Donna Barba Higuera's forthcoming middle grade science fiction novel, Alebrijes, is due out October 3 from Levine Querido. Reflecting on the book's genesis, she said, “We’re already talking about AI and putting our consciousness in another form. And so my weird mind wondered, what if you could put your consciousness into a drone.---from the publisher
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The next stunning novel from Donna Barba Higuera, author of Newbery and Pura Belpré Award-winning The Last Cuentista.
This is the story as it was told to me by Leandro the Mighty.
For 400 years, Earth has been a barren wasteland. The few humans that survive scrape together an existence in the cruel city of Pocatel – or go it alone in the wilderness beyond, filled with wandering spirits and wyrms. They don’t last long.
13 year-old pickpocket Leandro and his sister Gabi do what they can to forge a life in Pocatel. The city does not take kindly to Cascabel like them – the descendants of those who worked the San Joaquin Valley for generations.
When Gabi is caught stealing precious fruit from the Pocatelan elite, Leando takes the fall. But his exile proves more than he ever could have imagined -- far from a simple banishment, his consciousness is placed inside an ancient drone and left to fend on its own. But beyond the walls of Pocatel lie other alebrijes like Leandro who seek for a better world -- as well as mutant monsters, wasteland pirates, a hidden oasis, and the truth.
From Donna Barba Higuera, Newbery and Pura Belpré Medal-winning author of The Last Cuentista, comes another novel to astonish us and create a whole new imaginative world, that holds a mirror to our own.---from the publisher
336 pages 978-1646142637 Ages 10-14
Keywords: science fiction, dystopian, brother and sister, survival, accepting others, social issues, 10 year old, 11 year old, 12 year old, 13 year old, 14 year old
