Vega’s Piece of the Sky

A meteorite comes crashing down on the lives of three middle schoolers changing everything they know about family, friendships, and community in this charming and heartfelt novel with a light STEM touch.

The space rock is just the latest thing to land, uninvited, in Vega Lucero’s road-stop hometown. But when she discovers how much a chunk of the meteorite might be worth, she realizes it’s exactly the treasure she’s been hoping to find--and maybe a way to convince her mom not to sell the family store to big city developers to help pay for her grandpa Tata’s medical expenses.

Determined to find more pieces of the sky somewhere in the perilous desert wilderness, stubbornly independent Vega must set aside her distrust of outsiders to team up with Jasper, a would-be rival--and her own tagalong cousin Mila--on an overnight adventure to find more meteorites before the professional hunters who have descended on Date City do. But along the way, she realizes that she’s not the only one with the weight of the world on her shoulders. Jasper and Mila have secrets and worries of their own that has brought them on this journey.

Together, this ragtag group will battle against coyotes, a flood, and scorpions. But what they will ultimately discover is that no treasure is big enough to prevent unwelcome change. Only family and friends can help weather the unexpected that life brings.

Jennifer Torres is the author of Stef Soto, Taco Queen; The Fresh New Face of Griselda; and other books for young readers. She writes stories about home, friendship, and unexpected courage inspired by her Mexican American heritage. Jennifer started her career as a newspaper reporter, and even though she writes fiction now, she hopes her stories still have some truth in them. She lives with her family in Southern California.