The Secret Astronomers - Hardcover

Walker, Jessica

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593692675 ISBN 13: 9780593692677

Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers, 2025

Synopsis

Barnes & Noble's Best Young Adult Book of the Year!

Two strangers. One forgotten astronomy textbook. A decades-old secret.

A fascinating, highly illustrated, epistolary novel perfect for fans of Rainbow Rowell and Alice Oseman, featuring designed doodled edges!

When a recent transfer student starts keeping her diary in the oldest textbook at the Green Bank High School library, the last thing she expects is to receive a response. Thus begins a sweeping tale of unlikely friendship and long-buried secrets between two secret pen pals at a rural West Virginia high school.

Copernicus is adrift and searching for answers after the sudden death of her mother, and leaving her cosmopolitan life in San Francisco behind. Kepler is a small-town girl with straight A's and big plans to be the first person in her family to go to college, despite her family's modest means. The two girls are so different from one another but united in their goal to solve a mystery that has riddled Green Bank for decades.

Meticulously hand-drawn by debut author Jessica Walker across the pages of an actual ancient astrophysics textbook, The Secret Astronomers is a story of friendship, family, crop circles, secret crushes, giant telescopes, life in Appalachia, and two girls discovering new ways to connect across any divide that separates them.

About this title

About the Author

Jessica Walker is a multidisciplinary artist, illustrator, filmmaker, and educator. She is an assistant professor of fine arts at Parsons and has exhibited films, books, and 2D media in solo and group shows in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, and Australia. Her work is housed in the permanent collections at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Research Library, Yale University Haas Family Arts Library, and the University of Washington Art Library. She is also the illustrator of Baby Feminists and Baby Feminists Too.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Find the oldest book in the Green Bank High School Library.
Hidden inside are the secrets that are being left behind forever. If you're smart enough to figure out the message, then you have a right to know why a small town in the-middle-of-nowhere West Virginia is the center of intelligent life in the known universe.

August 15, 2016
I found your note, and this is definitely the oldest book in the Green Bank High School Library, but there is no trace of your secrets that I can find. The only thing worth finding in this library is a stack of old magazines that are up for grabs. Making strange collages out of "National Geographic"s from the '80s is the only way to get through this boring-ass study hall. That and writing to you, I guess. Why would you be so cryptic with hiding notes and keeping secrets in old library books? I guess this is how you entertained yourself when you were bored? You were always a little different, so that would make sense. I miss you.

August 22, 2016
don't you think that your mother has sad eyes? She took me to a yard "sail" yesterday (I kid you not, that's how "sale" was spelled on the sign). She couldn't hit the brakes fast enough when she saw that people were selling piles of random crap on their lawn. I did manage to score a mini Polaroid camera for five bucks. It's the kind that instantly prints pics. YOur mom says they don't "sail" the film anymore, but I guess she hasn't heard there's a retro resurgence. Anyway, I need this camera because there are plenty of incredible photo ops in West Virginia that deserve an artistic lens. My first project is to capture all the misspelled signs. I know you'd laugh with me if you could be here to see them all. I still don't know why I'm writing to you like this. I know you're not here, but it just feels like you are sometimes, especially when stuff is funny and I need someone to laugh with. I haven't laughed with anyone in a long time.

August 24, 2016
HEre are a few highlights from Green Bank High School--I'm sure plenty has changed since you were last here . . . Did you know that one can enroll in a masonry class? That's right. Learning to lay bricks is just the tip of the intellectual iceberg. Also, there's a poster hanging in the hallway to educate us about all the poor defenseless animals that residents are invited to hunt (aka kill) year-round in Pocahontas County. They include skunks, opossums, woodchucks, weasels, and English sparrows. Why would anyone need to kill an English sparrow? It just seems cruel. And . . . there's a pepe rally for the football team every Friday. We don't have to go back to class after lunch on Fridays because the rest of the afternoon is devoted to pepping and rallying. It's OK though, there's nothing particularly educational happening at the other times of day, either, so it doesn't seem lik emuch is lost. I really do hate it here.

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593692675
• ISBN 13: 9780593692677
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Walker Jessica
• Number of pages: 304