A speculative middle grade novelabout three generations of Black girls connected across time and space through a wormhole in their school locker.

What if your locker was a wormhole to the past?

On the first day of eighth grade, Candace Wells opens her locker and is astonished when an unusual bird flies out. Soon after, a notebook mysteriously appears on the top shelf, labeled Tracey Auburn, 1988. Stranger still, as Candace reads the notebook, new messages start to appear.

Professor Tracey Auburn only vaguely remembers a bird flying into her locker in eighth grade, way back in 1988, and losing a notebook she could have sworn she put on the top shelf. Until Candace shows up at her office with the missing notebook forty years later.

Quantum physicist Loretta Spencer will never forget the bird flying out of her locker in eighth grade in 1948. Her lifes work has been to study the portal and others like it, and now she needs Traceys and Candaces help to complete her research.

So begins an unlikely friendship and a hunt around Chicago and the state of Illinois to uncover the secrets of the locker, the universe, and everything. One things for sure: Eighth grade will never be the same again.

Eve L. Ewing is the award-winning author ofElectric Arches,1919, andGhosts in the Schoolyard. She also wrote the acclaimed Ironheart and Champions series for Marvel Comics. Her work has appeared in many venues, including theNew York Times, theNew Yorker, theWashington Post, andVanity Fair. Born and raised in Chicago, she was a middle school teacher before completing her doctorate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Currently she is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration.

Sherri L. Smith is the author of numerous acclaimed fiction and nonfiction books for young people, includingAmerican Wings: Chicago’s Pioneering Black Aviators and the Race for Equality in the Sky, co-authored with Elizabeth Wein;Flygirl, the winner of the California Book Awards’ Gold Medal;The Blossom and the Firefly, the winner of the Golden Kite Award from the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators;Orleans; andWho Were the Tuskegee Airmen?

• Publisher: G.P. Putnam & Songs for Young Readers (September 9, 2025)
• Language:English
• Hardcover: 336 pages
• ISBN-13: 9781524737931
• Reading age: 10+
• Item Weight: .9 pounds
• Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.3 inches