Reclaim the Stars: 17 Tales Across Realms & Space

About the Author\nZoraida Córdova is the editor of Vampires Never Get Old: Tales with Fresh Bite. She is the author of many fantasy novels for kids and teens, including the award-winning Brooklyn Brujas series, Incendiary, and Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge: A Crash of Fate. She is the co-host of the podcast Deadline City. Zoraida was born in Ecuador and raised in Queens, New York. When she isn’t working on her next novel, she’s planning a new adventure.\nFrom stories that take you to the stars, to stories that span into other times and realms, to stories set in the magical now, Reclaim the Stars takes the Latin American diaspora to places fantastical and out of this world.\nFollow princesses warring in space, haunting ghost stories in Argentina, mermaids off the coast of the Caribbean, swamps that whisper secrets, and many more realms explored and unexplored; this stunning collection of seventeen short stories breaks borders and realms to prove that stories are truly universal.\nReclaim the Stars features both bestselling and acclaimed authors as well as two new voices in the genres: Vita Ayala, David Bowles, J.C. Cervantes, Zoraida Córdova, Sara Faring, Romina Garber, Isabel Ibañez, Anna-Marie McLemore, Yamile Saied Méndez, Nina Moreno, Circe Moskowitz, Maya Motayne, Linda Raquel Nieves Pérez, Daniel José Older, Claribel A. Ortega, Mark Oshiro and Lilliam Rivera.\nFrom School Library Journal\nGr 10 Up—Justice, prison reform, polyamorous love, feminism, toppling dictators, and other timely topics populate the pages of this collection of short stories set in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Argentina, magical realms, and distant planets. While the characters in each of these stories are children coming of age, the apocalyptic and magical settings force them to become wise before their time. "The Tin Man" puts Alida in the desperate position of either remaining on Earth where she has memories of her family or getting into an ark destined for unknown parts and beginning again. In "Killing El Chivo," Yesenia, Zaria, and Milagros are left to fend for themselves under a dictatorship that kidnapped and killed their parents. The teens becoming adults in this short story have to grapple with the difference between justice and revenge, and how both still twist the survivors into something they don't want to be. Yesenia learns that to destroy a monster, one must become a monster as well. "Leyenda" by Romina Garber revisits the domain of werewolves and witches, and in it, the main character, Zaybet, tackles patriarchal systems of oppression. In each of these entries a sacrifice is negotiated in order for the protagonist to evolve into a hero and a survivor. VERDICT This collection is recommended for older teens due to the intimate nature of the various characters within the stories. A solid choice for YA shelves.—Stephanie Creamer