Erin Entrada Kelly won the Newbery Award for her middle grade novel, Hello, Universe in 2018. Unfortunately, I haven’t read Ms. Kelly’s award-winning book, but I did get a copy of her latest book, We Dream of Space. I thought it might be particularly interesting because it’s set in 1985-86, as a class and their space-loving teacher prepare for the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Engineer Husband just started working at NASA in the fall of 1985, and of course, we remember the Challenger disaster quite vividly.

So, We Dream of Space features a dysfunctional family: mom and dad, and three children, Cash, Fitch, and Bird. All three siblings are in the seventh grade because Fitch and Brid are twins, and Cash is doing seventh grade for a second year after failing his classes the previous year. As the story progresses, showcasing each of the three kids in alternating chapters, the writing is good, and the characters are very real and growing. Cash is trying to find out if there’s anything that he’s actually good at doing, since basketball and schoolwork are both out. Fitch is obsessed with playing games at the video arcade and trying to hold his temper. Bird wants to become the first female space shuttle commander as well as being the one person who attempts to hold the family together as they spin out in their separate orbits.

Wow, was this book a downer! It started out with a dysfunctional family, parents that call each other (expletive deleted) names all through the book and siblings that mainly ignore one another as much as possible, and it ended with the Cash, Fitch and Bird coming through their various difficulties with a small glimmer of hope in spite of the story’s climax in which the space shuttle Challenger explodes.

When I say “small glimmer of hope” I mean small. The hope is barely there, and I’m not sure young readers will see it at all. Maybe this story would be encouraging, something of a mirror, for those children who live in dysfunctional families like the one in the book, but I tend to think escapist literature is more appealing for many children (and adults) who live in hard situations. At least, Bird has her astronaut fantasies, Fitch his video games, and Cash his Philadelphia 76ers basketball games. The reader of this sad but true to life novel won’t get much more than a glimpse of a beginning of family growth, maybe. Is Ms. Entrada’s Newbery winner as sad and discouraging as this one is? If so, maybe I’ll just skip it.