Best of the Best Book Club: “The Last Cuentista” by Donna Barba Higuera

The Coronado Public Library’s Best of the Best Book Club meets regularly on the fourth Wednesday of each month to discuss books that have won major awards.

For our September meeting, we will read and discuss the winner of the 2022 Newbery Medal, The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera, a brilliant journey through the stars, to the very heart of what makes us human.

About The Last Cuentista

Había una vez . . .

There lived a girl named Petra Peña, who wanted nothing more than to be a storyteller, like her abuelita.

But Petra’s world is ending. Earth has been destroyed by a comet, and only a few hundred scientists and their children ― among them Petra and her family ― have been chosen to journey to a new planet. They are the ones who must carry on the human race.

Hundreds of years later, Petra wakes to this new planet ― and the discovery that she is the only person who remembers Earth. A sinister Collective has taken over the ship during its journey, bent on erasing the sins of humanity’s past. They have systematically purged the memories of all aboard ― or purged them altogether.

Petra alone now carries the stories of our past, and with them, any hope for our future. Can she make them live again?