The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera

Petra is now the only person aboard the ship who remembers Earth. Petra is one of the last to be awakened, and she quickly learns that most passengers were awakened early, some hundreds of years ago, to help with the ship’s voyage. A skeleton crew remains awake on the ship for the journey, with the role of them and the generations that come after them is to take care of the ship and the sleeping passengers.īut when Petra wakes up in the future, not yet at Sagan, things are not as they were promised. The passengers will be awakened when landing is imminent. Petra and her family are told that, once aboard the ship, they and the other passengers will all be asleep for the 380-year journey to Sagan, a planet in a different solar system that scientists think can support life. How lucky I am.” Although impossibly sad to leave Earth, and especially her grandmother, Petra is buoyed by the hope that the memories of humanity on Earth can continue on through sharing the stories her grandmother has shared with her. You’re taking me and my stories to a new planet and hundreds of years into the future. Her grandmother answers: “It’s impossible for you to leave me. “I can’t believe we’re leaving you,” Petra tells her grandmother the day they depart. Petra learned how to be a cuentista from her grandmother, who did not qualify for passage on the ship. When Halley’s Comet goes on a collision course for Earth in the year 2061, Petra Peña, a 13-year-old storyteller - a cuentista - along with her younger brother and parents (scientists who specialize in botany), and other specialized citizens, board a spaceship to escape the disaster. The Last Cuentista is about the power of stories in our lives. The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera