2024 NCTE National African American Read-In
Classroom-centered event
Wednesday, February 28, 2023 – 1:00–1:45 p.m. ET
NCTE welcomes educators and their students to join us for our third annual virtual African American Read-In, featuring Sarah Everett, author of The Probability of Everything. This book is the winner of the 2024 Charlotte Huck Award® for Outstanding Fiction for Children. This event is focused on middle grade classrooms, to celebrate the African American Read-In nationally through the lens of this new fiction book.
We envision teachers in classrooms coast to coast joining us for this 45-minute event. The session will be moderated by the Middle Level Section Steering Committee, who will also be leading the activity for students.
“A heart-wrenching middle grade debut about Kemi, an aspiring scientist who loves statistics and facts, as she navigates grief and loss at a moment when life as she knows it changes forever.
Eleven-year-old Kemi Carter loves scientific facts, specifically probability. It’s how she understands the world and her place in it. Kemi knows her odds of being born were 1 in 5.5 trillion and that the odds of her having the best family ever were even lower. Yet somehow, Kemi lucked out.
But everything Kemi thought she knew changes when she sees an asteroid hover in the sky, casting a purple haze over her world. Amplus-68 has an 84.7% chance of colliding with earth in four days, and with that collision, Kemi’s life as she knows it will end.
But over the course of the four days, even facts don’t feel true to Kemi anymore. The new town she moved to that was supposed to be “better for her family” isn’t very welcoming. And Amplus-68 is taking over her life, but others are still going to school and eating at their favorite diner like nothing has changed. Is Kemi the only one who feels like the world is ending?
With the days numbered, Kemi decides to put together a time capsule that will capture her family’s truth: how creative her mother is, how inquisitive her little sister can be, and how much Kemi’s whole world revolves around her father. But no time capsule can change the truth behind all of it, that Kemi must face the most inevitable and hardest part of life: saying goodbye.”
—Harper Collins Publishers book summary
(NCTE and independent bookstores receive a small commission from books purchased using the bookshop.org links provided.)
This event is free to NCTE members.
Sarah Everett is the author of several books for young readers, including the award-winning The Probability of Everything and How to Live Without You. She has been writing stories since childhood, and her work has been published in eleven languages. When she is not reading or writing, she is dreaming about summer, perfecting her tree pose or gearing up for her next travel adventure. She lives in the Canadian prairies. Her newest middle-grade novel, The Shape of Lost Things, comes out October 2024.