This is such a fun way of approaching the idea of a kid wanting more autonomy in their lives and to be trusted more with responsibility. I'll readily recommend this for the library I work at! It is a fantastic exploration of STEM topics, science and space, in the context of a coming of age. ( )

A little girl named Grace lives in space and gets up to a little mischief due to the negligence of Kendra, one of her mothers, and then gets into very real trouble due to Kendra's negligence at her job. Thankfully, there's a super-competent mom, Evelyn, to offset the loser, 'cuz them losers gonna lose.

I have mixed feelings about this book because I just felt low-key bad for Grace the whole time and cringed whenever Kendra opened her mouth. It's not a pleasant story by any means

It doesn't help that the relationships in the story are vague and only subtly laid out over time, which is sort of a dumb thing to do in a children's book. The girl refers to bad mom as "ba," which is not a term I'm familiar with but was supposed to be our cue that they have a mother/daughter relationship. Evelyn says a couple of roundabout things to verify she was married to Kendra at some point before Grace was born, but the current relationship goes unstated. My impression is that the two moms are at least separated but probably divorced, and the trip Grace takes in the book with bad mom Kendra is a scheduled child visitation thing.

There's a case to be made for revocation of those visitation rights by the end of the book, but the author and characters choose to go another direction. ( )

The art for this was phenomenal, and I really enjoyed the world(s) building of the cool space exploring society in which the story is set. At its heart, it's a very familiar story about an adolescent's need, simultaneously, for safety and parental attention and for independence and the recognition of their own skills and abilities—particularly in an environment of divorce, or military deployment, or other scenario where one parent may not generally be involved in the day to day care and observation of their needs and simultaneous growing skills and maturity. ( )

Grace lives with one of her moms on a space station where Mom is the chief engineer; her other mom, Ba, is a freighter captain. Grace is excited to go on a trip with Ba, but Ba is too busy with work to pay much attention to Grace, and doesn't trust her to help with anything.

An outer space setting creates high stakes for what is, at heart, a realistic story about a tween desiring independence and adventure and also her parental safety net.

See also: Sanity & Tallulah ( )