You Only Live Once, David Bravo
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From Mark Oshiro, award-winning author of The Insiders, this time-bending adventure is perfect for fans of Sal and Gabi Break the Universe and When You Reach Me.
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year * An ALA Rainbow Book List Top 10 Selection
Middle school is the worst, especially for David Bravo. He doesn’t have a single class with his best (okay, only) friend, Antoine. He has to give a class presentation about his heritage, but he’s not sure how—or even if—he wants to explain to his new classmates that he’s adopted. After he injures Antoine in an accident at cross-country practice, he just wishes he could do it all over.
He doesn’t expect his wish to summon a talking, shapeshifting, annoying dog, Fea, who claims that a choice in David’s past actually did put him on the wrong timeline… and she can take him back to fix it.
But when their first try (and the second, and the third) is a total disaster, David and Fea are left scrambling through timeline after timeline—on a quest that may lead them to answers in the most unexpected places.
Coco meets Sliding Doors in this laugh-out-loud, heartwarming middle grade novel that explores how our choices make us who we are.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In California, an 11-year-old given the chance for a redo makes mistakes over—and over—again in a joyful novel with a pick-your-path vibe. For David Bravo, a transracial adoptee of Latinx descent, the first week of middle school is riddled with mistakes and disappointments: he gets food poisoning from hot-lunch spinach, accidentally hurts his closest friend during cross-country, and is bullied about his adoption during a presentation on family heritage. The solution to his do-over desires shows up at his back door: a magical hairless hound, Fea, who communicates telepathically and can send him into the body of his past self. For David, it's the perfect way to fix his relationship with his best friend; for Fea, it's another step toward finishing her job as a "non-corporeal timeline guide." As Fea and David endeavor to repair his timeline, it rapidly becomes apparent that fixing small mistakes is not what destiny has in store. Through turns both lighthearted and deeply moving, Oshiro (The Insiders) identifies how day-to-day choices ("Do I quickly make a decision before desks are occupied? Oh, absolutely not") can have long-term effects in this novel of self-discovery that reminds readers: "The future is unwritten.... That's always up to you." Ages 8–12.
