Candace, the Universe, and Everything
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- USD 8.99
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- USD 8.99
Descripción editorial
A speculative middle grade novel about three generations of Black girls connected across time and space through a wormhole in their school locker.
A School Library Journal and Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year
What if your locker was a wormhole to the past?
On the first day of eighth grade, Candace Wells opens her locker and is astonished when an unusual bird flies out. Soon after, a notebook mysteriously appears on the top shelf, labeled Tracey Auburn, 1988. Stranger still, as Candace reads the notebook, new messages start to appear.
Professor Tracey Auburn only vaguely remembers a bird flying into her locker in eighth grade, way back in 1988, and losing a notebook she could have sworn she put on the top shelf. Until Candace shows up at her office with the missing notebook forty years later.
Quantum physicist Loretta Spencer will never forget the bird flying out of her locker in eighth grade in 1948. Her life’s work has been to study the portal and others like it, and now she needs Tracey’s and Candace’s help to complete her research.
So begins an unlikely friendship and a hunt around Chicago and the state of Illinois to uncover the secrets of the locker, the universe, and everything. One thing’s for sure: Eighth grade will never be the same again.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The secrets of a middle schooler's locker connect three generations of Black girls across time in this speculative novel by Smith (Pearl). Struggling to navigate changing friendship dynamics, 13-year-old Candace Wells starts eighth grade with a pit in her stomach. After "a bird of unordinary colouring" flies out of her locker, Candace discovers a notebook belonging to someone named Tracey Auburn, who seems to be sending Candace messages through the pages from the past. Tracking down the volume's owner, Candace meets adult Tracey, who shares that the same bird flew into her locker in 1988. Candace and Tracey soon encounter elderly quantum physicist Loretta Spencer, who informs the pair that the locker is a knot in time through which only the unusual bird can travel—and that Loretta needs Candace and Tracey's help to map all the knots in Chicago. Chapters alternate between Candace in the present, Tracey in 1988, and Loretta in 1968; interspersed throughout are brief, sensorial excerpts from an in-universe children's story about a window in the sky. The trio's heartwarming bond takes center stage; with help from the older women, who act as her mentors, Candace learns how to navigate friendship woes and a first crush. Ages 10–up.
