Higuera, Donna Barba
Entry updated 27 May 2024. Tagged: Author.
(? - ) US author whose first novel is nonfantastic, followed by El Cucuy Is Scared, Too! (2021 chap), a short fantasy for younger children featuring a sympathetic Monster. She is of sf interest for her second full-length tale, the Young Adult The Last Cuentista (2021), which interestingly soon extracts its young protagonist and her family away from a Dystopian Near Future Earth devastated by a Comet strike. After arousal from Suspended Animation as they near a new and habitable planet, she discovers herself to be the only human with any Memory of the Story of Homo sapiens. This story – "cuentista" means "storyteller" – she is destined to keep alive by reiterating it in the new world. The Young Adult Alebrijes (2023) – whose title designates a papier-mache animal figure with iconic significance – is set in a devastated world; the young protagonist, his consciousness having been inserted into an ancient Robot drone in lieu of a Prison sentence (see Crime and Punishment; Identity Transfer), must traverse the Ruined Earth in search of some enclave (see Zone) which may have survived Homo-sapiens mutilation. [JC]
Donna Barba Higuera
born California
works (selected)
- El Cucuy Is Scared, Too! (New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2021) [novelette: chap: hb/Juliana Perdomo]
- The Last Cuentista (Montclair, New Jersey: Levine Querido, 2021) [hb/]
- Alebrijes (Montclair, New Jersey: Levine Querido, 2023) [hb/David Alvarez]
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