MMGM- A Quilt of Stars and The Intergalatics

It's

Marvelous Middle Grade Monday
 at 

Always in the Middle 

and #IMWAYR day 

at

Unleashing Readers

Nyberg, Karen, Staats, Ann McCallum and Massari, Alida (illus.)
A Quilt of Stars: Astronaut Karen Nyberg Stitches a Dream
September 29, 2026 by Familius
E ARC provided by Netgalley

Young Karen Nyberg (born in 1969) loved both sewing and space, but until 1978, women weren't accepted into NASA as astronaut candidates. Nyberg's family doubted her, but after a lot of hard work, she entered the program. Eventually, she was chosen to go to the International Space Station, where she and the other crew members would run crucial experiments. Only allowed three pounds of personal items, Nyberg put in some fabric, thread, and needles, hoping to have some free time, and ended up making a stuffed dinosaur for her young son out of some scavenged materials. It wasn't easy to sew in space, so she came up with a challenge; she designed a star quilt block and asked others to design similar ones to be made into quilts for the International Quilt Festival. Almost 2,400 blocks were seen and donated, and were made into twenty eight quilts for the 2014 festival. 

It's great for young readers to see that there was a time when women were not able to do whatever they wanted, but to realize how lucky we are now. There's progress still to be made, but Nyberg was about the fiftieth woman in space. I'm a huge fan of needle arts, especially since historically, they were some of the few ways women could express their creativity. It's fantastic to see a woman who excelled in a male dominated STEM field who used her platform to champion a traditional craft. 

I had somehow missed this story, so I'm grateful to Ms. Starts for bringing it to my attention. Nyberg is about my age, shares my name, and is a much better quilter than I am! (Look at the stitches on her dinosaur toy!) Of course, the first thing I thought when I was reading this was "I would bring a cross stitch picture with me", since the cloth and thread would be light, and it would keep me occupied for a while. The hardship of not having the right scissors, though; you can tell that Nyberg must have taken her NASA training very seriously to be able to get past having to use regular scissors to cut out fabric. 

The text is somewhat poetic, and weaves together the stories of both of Nyberg's interests well. There's a helpful note at the end of the book to elaborate on a few details. The illustrations also blend sewing and space in a pleasing fashion, with lots of blue and yellow pictures that evoke quilt blocks. This would be a great read aloud in a classroom during Women's History Month, or for starting a science unit on space. For the right child, Nyberg would be an excellent person to portray for a biography Wax Museum! 

Slangerup, Erik Jon. The Intergalactics
September 29, 2026 by Aladdin
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus

Brinx is a Featherbone, a lab grown life hybrid form designed by the experimental HyperHelix corporation. He has spent his whole life participating in survival challenges in order to complete a thousand of them. Once he has all thousand bars tattooed on his arm, he will be eligible to travel to Havenport. Until then, he must suffer through tense living conditions with poor food and constant fear of death. The one light in his life is Jang, who is an earlier generation Featherbone who has helped Brinx survive. After a horrible conflict in the Zelmoner arena, both boys get their bars and prepare to leave. Even that doesn't go well; the transport they are on is hit by a meteor shower and crashes in the Driftlands. There, just about everything in the environment tries to kill them. Thanks to their lifelong survival training, Brinx is able to survive, and bands together with others, including a Griplock named Goz of whom he is rather fond, an Allseer named Rigel, and others like Nuuma, Vryken, and Sig. Jang disappears, but Brinx is too busy trying to stay alive to find his friend. There are all manner of dangers that take some of his associates, but shortly after seeing a symbol etched on a rock that might be from Jang, the remaining members of the group are rescued by an older, wrinkled man with a Zipline. He takes them underground, where they learn a lot about their society and their possible fate. The ending makes it possible for there to be a second book. 

Strengths: There's something to be said for fantasy worlds where things are completely unlike Earth as we know it. Westerfeld's Uglies, Oppel's Bloom trilogy, and Dashner's The Maze Runner books have been very popular, and readers of those series are constantly looking for another riveting dystopian adventure. Brinx is an interesting character with an impossibley hard life who is just trying to get to a happier place. Giving him Jang as a friend, and then taking him away, gives him motivation to survive when things go from bad to worse. There are a wide range of hybrids, who all have interesting defining characteristics; I have to admit to having a soft spot for the young and vulnerable Rigel whose Allseer abilities to read situations and realize before they go very, very wrong are crucial to the survival of the group. When he is badly injured, it makes perfect sense that the group protects him instead of leaving him for the man eating flowers to ingest! I also enjoyed the fact that the characters didn't infight and imperil themselves the way they do in many dystopian books. There are far too many dangerous things in the Driftlands for bickering to occur! My favorite part of the book might have been the crash foam; when the transport carrier goes down, it fills with foam so that the travelers aren't badly injured. Not that I would want to clean crashfoam out of my car upholstery, but the auto industry should take notes! 
Weaknesses: I'm not normally a fan of infodumping world building, but I wanted to know a little bit more about what was behind the HyperHelix plan. Why were they breeding hybrids? I was also not very sure where in space this took place. Younger readers will just be glad to leap right into the adventure. Perhaps there will be more details in book two. 
What I really think: This is a good choice for readers who enjoyed a good dystopian space adventure like Sylvester's MINRS, Johnson's Aku: Journey to Ibra or Reintgen's The Last Dragon on Mars. If you enjoyed this one, also check out Slangerup's more Earthbound science fiction adventures, Molly and the Machine and Molly and the Mutants.