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When eleven-year-old Stella Rodriguez shows up at NASA to request that her recording be included in Carl Sagan's Golden Record, something unexpected happens: A black hole follows her home, and sets out to live in her house as a pet. The black hole swallows everything he touches, which is challenging to say the least—but also turns out to be a convenient way to get rid of those items that Stella doesn't want around. Soon the ugly sweaters her aunt has made for her all disappear within the black hole, as does the smelly class hamster she's taking care of, and most important, all the reminders of her dead father that are just too painful to have around.
It's not until Stella, her younger brother, Cosmo, the family puppy, and even the bathroom tub all get swallowed up by the black hole that Stella comes to realize she has been letting her own grief consume her. And that's not the only thing she realizes as she attempts to get back home. This is an astonishingly original and funny adventure with a great big heart.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
September 16, 2017 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780525527213
- File size: 113340 KB
- Duration: 03:56:07
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Languages
- English
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Levels
- Lexile® Measure: 710
- Text Difficulty: 3
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Reviews
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September 4, 2017
It’s the summer of 1977, and after 11-year-old Stella Rodriguez visits NASA in a fruitless attempt to meet Carl Sagan, a black hole follows her home. Stella names him Larry, and although he tends to swallow everything around him, she realizes that he’s just trying to cuddle. But after he consumes a treasured photo of her late father she explodes in anger, causing Larry to run away. Cuevas (Confessions of an Imaginary Friend) carefully balances an energetic plot full of silliness (at one point, Stella and her younger brother get sucked into the black hole themselves, an escapade that fittingly unfolds in white print on black pages) with more introspective concerns. Stella confronts the darkness literally and figuratively as she weighs the pros and cons of keeping a black hole as a pet: sure, he can swallow up the bad things in life, but he also takes away the good. Cuevas doesn’t skirt the depths of sadness surrounding the death of a parent nor the difficulty of reconstructing one’s sense of home afterward. Sketchlike b&w line drawings appear throughout. Ages 8–12. Agent: Emily van Beek, Folio Literary Management.
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