First-chapter Friday : The Last Cuentista

Each Friday I share the link to a read-aloud preview of a book from our school library, with the SRCSA community. The “First-chapter Friday” selection for March 4, 2022, is The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera.

Petra Peña 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? The Last Cuentista was the winner, in 2022, of the Newbery Medal, and of the Pura Belpré Children’s Author Award.