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ABOUT THE BOOK
NO SPOILERSTwelve-year-old Petra Peña has always dreamed of becoming a storyteller like her grandmother Lita, who raised her on cuentos and Mexican folklore in the New Mexico desert. But when Halley's Comet is knocked off course and is set to destroy Earth, Petra and her family are chosen to board one of three interstellar ships bound for a distant planet called Sagan. Before climbing into her stasis pod for a 380-year journey, Lita gives Petra an obsidian pendant and urges her to carry their stories to a new world. A kind Monitor named Ben secretly loads mythology and folklore into Petra's En Cognito program as a birthday gift, but something goes wrong with her stasis Cog and Petra is awake just long enough to hear something alarming before the sleep finally takes her.
Free Battle of the Books questions for The Last Cuentista
SPOILERSEvery one of these has the same answer, and that is the point. In a real battle the question is read aloud with a dozen other books in play, and students have a few seconds to place it. Here is what a battle might ask about The Last Cuentista. Use them as a quiz, a trivia round, or BOTB practice.
Where in the book they come from
- Early in the book
In what book does a kind man read aloud the ancient Sumerian story of a king and his bull-like friend?
✓ Answer
The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera
Ben reads the Epic of Gilgamesh aloud in the stasis room because he believes all stories have value. Petra, secretly awake, listens and pictures Gilgamesh and Enkidu battling among the pods.
- First half
In what book does a grandmother retell the fable where a fox tricks a crow into dropping its cheese?
✓ Answer
The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera
Lita's voice echoes in Petra's mind during the Chancellor's party, warning about tricksters who use sweet words to get what they want. The story comes back at the exact moment Petra sees the Chancellor as the real fox.
- First half
In what book do two moons and a yellow ringed planet hang above the horizon of a new world?
✓ Answer
The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera
When Petra steps off the shuttle, a small moon peeks over a larger one like a younger sibling. A red dwarf sun bathes everything in a softer gold than Earth's sunlight.
- Second half
In what book does a small boy whisper, "I get extra hungry too sometimes" to a thieving girl?
✓ Answer
The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera
When Voxy catches Petra trying to steal a box of bioloaf, she expects him to turn her in. Instead he confesses that he too gets hungry, shoves two more boxes into her bag, and runs off, one of the first hints he is more rebellious than the Collective realizes.
- Second half
In what book does a girl recognize a freckle birthmark and realize an old man is her brother?
✓ Answer
The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera
Working in the lab next to Epsilon-5, Petra spots a constellation of freckles on his left thumb that she has known her whole life. The old scientist she has been befriending is actually her little brother Javier, decades older, kept alive by the Collective.
- Near the end
In what book does a giant elephant ear leaf the size of a hovercar fly past a shuttle ramp?
✓ Answer
The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera
As the group prepares to step off the shuttle for the last time, an enormous leaf rips through the air right past the bottom of the ramp. Petra realizes that if any of them had been standing there, the leaf would have taken all four of them out.
