Battle of the Books 2025 Reviews: Last Cuentista and First Cat

My youngest is engaged in the Battle of the Books, a competition sponsored by our local public library. He has a team of classmates that are reading nine books and getting ready to answer trivia questions at a county-wide meeting in late April. I am reading some of the books too. Here's the first two I've read...

The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera

The Earth is about to be hit by Halley's Comet, so select people are evacuated, going hopefully to a habitable planet far away. One family selected is the Penas. Daughter Petra wants to be a storyteller like her granny Lita. The people will be put in stasis and uploaded with useful information on the centuries long trip. Storytelling is not a prized skill, so Petra is unhappy about the situation. The situation becomes much worse when she is woken up hundreds of years later on the ship by a group that has seized control and is called the Collective. It is an evil organization that has homogenized everyone's looks and erased their memories of Earth in an attempt to create peace and harmony for human beings. If the memory purge does not work on a person, that individual is purged. Petra has to pretend to be Zeta-1, a technician who will help to assess a planet that the ship has discovered and seems habitable. She really wants to save her family and escape from the Collective if she can.

The story has an interesting (if unoriginal) premise. Petra truly loves her family and misses her times on Earth with Lita. Her storytelling is what keeps her going and the book has plenty of flashbacks to Lita telling stories and giving advice (sometimes telling a story to give advice). Lita encourages Petra to make the stories her own, which winds up being a little narcissistic. Petra tells stories to some of her shipmates as a way to keep them on her side. Often she recasts the stories to make herself seem heroic or to get the outcomes she wants, as if the stories are meant to serve her rather than have value in themselves. So the further I got in the book, the less I liked her. The Collective is so clearly and blatantly evil that it might excuse Petra from "making the stories her own," (advice from Lita) but I was a lot less sympathetic with her by the end of the book. I still had sympathy for her and the final action is exciting.

Mildly recommended--the story is very entertaining but Petra turned out to be less of the hero than I wanted her to be. 

The First Cat in Space Ate Pizza by Mac Barnett and Shawn Harris

Scientist discover that the moon is being eaten by rats. If they go unchecked, the moon will disappear entirely! They decide to send a scientifically-enhanced cat to deal with the rodent infestation. The ship has a quirky robot guiding it and a toe-nail-clipping robot for some reason. Once they make it to the moon, they have various adventures on their way to confront the rats, including meeting the Moon Queen, who becomes an ally.  

The story is about as silly as the premise, though the cat does not speak English, it just meows significantly, so there's a tiny nod to realism. It is entertaining  and creative but very light-weight and definitely aimed at kids. 

Barely recommended--I probably would never have read this if it weren't for Battle of the Books.