Mayflower Project (Remnants, 1)

From K.A. Applegate, best-selling author of Animorphs and Everworld, comes a dark and powerful new series that begins with the end of Earth as we know it. The end of the world. Not something most people really think about. Not something we expect to ever really happen. But what if you found out that an asteroid the size of New Jersey was about to collide with the earth? What would you do? That¹s what Jobs is asking himself. The question he asked his family. And he certainly didn¹t expect the answer he got. He didn¹t expect that in a very short time he and his family would be a few of the lucky ones selected to board a revamped space shuttle. What happens when they get to where they¹re going if they make it there at all?

K.A. Applegate, author of the wildly popular Animorphs books, begins a brand new series with a bang. In the gripping Mayflower Project, the first of the Remnants series, she establishes several diverse characters and the tensions and alliances between them and sets them on their way into the wild blue yonder. Hip lingo, faintly futuristic technologies, and kid-next-door characterizations draw readers in--the plot hooks 'em for good.

The cast of characters? A 14-year-old technogeek who calls himself Jobs after computer king Steve Jobs; the angry, aggressive son of America's African American woman president; a dreamy, psychic boy, adopted as a toddler from an orphanage in Chechnya; and a driven, strikingly beautiful, yet horribly disfigured girl who calls herself 2Face. The year is 2011 and these four, along with 76 others, are destined to meet on a hastily jerry-rigged shuttle whose sole aim is to leave Earth before the giant asteroid that is hurtling through space blows the planet to smithereens. Amid confusion, skepticism, and sheer panic as the world comes to terms with its impending, inevitable doom, the chosen few are whisked to Cape Canaveral to board a pitifully small, shabby steel tube NASA has optimistically named the Mayflower. They leave everything behind, including any hope of returning; vast, endless space is the only certainty in their future.

Applegate's hungry Animorphs fans, perhaps a little older now, will be thrilled with her latest series, knowing the 80 earth escapees have many, many riveting adventures ahead of them. After all, the sky's the limit. (Ages 9 and older) --Emilie Coulter