A compelling mix of folk tale and sci-fi for young readers
A brave new world for today’s youth.
The daughter of an award winning botanist and geologist, Petra has grown up knowing the importance of nature and looking after the planet, but also knows that’s not what she wants to do. She wants to follow in the footsteps, and words, of her grandmother Lita, a storyteller who makes whole worlds come alive and shine with the magic of her cuentos.
The novel, which takes place in a not too distant future, sees Petra’s family being selected as the lucky few to get a place on a spaceship headed for a new planet, as Earth is set to be hit by Halley’s Comet and be destroyed. The main issue is they won’t get there for 400 years, so the experts and their children are to be put in stasis, while the monitors (staff) of the spaceship live out their lives in real-time, so their distant ancestors will be the ones to wake up Petra and the other passengers when the time comes.
It is when this fateful day finally arrives though that the real story begins and all that Petra had believed about this trip starts to unravel.
This is a really compelling middle grade novel which brought to mind dystopian fiction like Brave New World, with a more space age element, alongside the Mexican folk tale tradition. The Collective had a very sinister edge and the action was suspenseful as we were rooting for Petra the whole time.
The daughter of an award winning botanist and geologist, Petra has grown up knowing the importance of nature and looking after the planet, but also knows that’s not what she wants to do. She wants to follow in the footsteps, and words, of her grandmother Lita, a storyteller who makes whole worlds come alive and shine with the magic of her cuentos.
The novel, which takes place in a not too distant future, sees Petra’s family being selected as the lucky few to get a place on a spaceship headed for a new planet, as Earth is set to be hit by Halley’s Comet and be destroyed. The main issue is they won’t get there for 400 years, so the experts and their children are to be put in stasis, while the monitors (staff) of the spaceship live out their lives in real-time, so their distant ancestors will be the ones to wake up Petra and the other passengers when the time comes.
It is when this fateful day finally arrives though that the real story begins and all that Petra had believed about this trip starts to unravel.
This is a really compelling middle grade novel which brought to mind dystopian fiction like Brave New World, with a more space age element, alongside the Mexican folk tale tradition. The Collective had a very sinister edge and the action was suspenseful as we were rooting for Petra the whole time.