The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez
2021 Pura Belpré Honor Book
NYPL Best Book of 2020
2020 Evanston Public Library Great Books for Kids
Connecticut Nutmeg Book Award 2023
Florida Sunshine State Young Readers Award 2021-2022
Illinois Rebecca Caudill Young Readers Book Award 2023
Massachusetts Children's Book Award 2022-2023
Michigan MISelf in Books, 2021
North Carolina NCSLMA Elementary Battle of the Books '23
Oregon Battle of the Books 2023-2024, Grades 6-8
Oregon Reader's Choice Award, 2023, Upper Elementary
South Dakota Teen Choice Award, 2022-2023
Spirit of Texas Reading Program 2022
Wyoming Indian Paintbrush Book Award, 2023-2024
New South Wales, Australia Premier Reading Challenge 2023
In this magical middle-grade debut novel from Adrianna Cuevas, The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez, a Cuban American boy must use his secret ability to communicate with animals to save the inhabitants of his town when they are threatened by a tule vieja, a witch that transforms into animals.
All Nestor Lopez wants is to live in one place for more than a few months and have dinner with his dad.
When he and his mother move to a new town to live with his grandmother after his dad’s latest deployment, Nestor plans to lay low. He definitely doesn’t want to anyone find out his deepest secret: that he can talk to animals.
But when the animals in his new town start disappearing, Nestor's grandmother becomes the prime suspect after she is spotted in the woods where they were last seen. As Nestor investigates the source of the disappearances, he learns that they are being seized by a tule vieja—a witch who can absorb an animal’s powers by biting it during a solar eclipse. And the next eclipse is just around the corner…
Now it’s up to Nestor’s extraordinary ability and his new friends to catch the tule vieja—and save a place he might just call home.