Badger, Darcie Little

In Darcie Little Badger’s A Snake Falls to Earth (Levine Querido), we meet Nina, a 16-year-old Lipan Apache girl from Texas. She’s always felt there was something more out there. She still believes in the old stories. When she was 9, her great-great-grandmother Rosita told her a story in Spanish and Lipan, a mysterious story about a fish girl. Oli is a cottonmouth kid from the land of spirits and monsters. Like all cottonmouths, he’s been cast from home, but he’s found a new one on the banks of the bottomless lake. Nina and Oli have no idea the other exists. But a catastrophic event on Earth, and a strange sickness that befalls Oli’s best friend, will bring their worlds together in ways they haven’t been in centuries. And some will kill to keep them apart. Kirkus celebrated how the “story leads readers through two richly constructed worlds using a style that evokes the timeless feeling of listening to traditional oral storytelling. A coming-of-age story that beautifully combines tradition and technology for modern audiences.”