Our Wise Owl Tween Book Club will meet in person again this month! Please join us in the B Room, downstairs to the right of the Cafe, on Thursday July 28th at 4pm. If you cannot make the in-person meeting, there is an option to join through a hybrid Zoom session. Please register and choose the Zoom option if necessary.

We'll be reading Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia! Our author will also join us virtually to discuss his book with us!

The first 15 registrants will receive a free copy of the book to keep, available to pick up starting Friday July 1st, limited to one copy per household. 

If you were not able to sign up in time to receive a free copy, you may still join the discussion. The book is available to check out from the library. 

Seventh-grader Tristan Strong feels anything but strong ever since he failed to save his best friend when they were in a bus accident together. All he has left of Eddie is the journal his friend wrote stories in.

Tristan is dreading the month he’s going to spend on his grandparents’ farm in Alabama, where he’s being sent to heal from the tragedy. But on his first night there, a sticky creature shows up in his bedroom and steals Eddie’s journal. Tristan chases after it — is that a doll? — and a tug-of-war ensues between them underneath a Bottle Tree.

In a last attempt to wrestle the journal out of the creature’s hands, Tristan punches the tree, accidentally ripping open a chasm into the MidPass, a volatile place with a burning sea, haunted bone ships, and iron monsters that are hunting the inhabitants of this world. Tristan finds himself in the middle of a battle that has left black American gods John Henry and Brer Rabbit exhausted. In order to get back home, Tristan and these new allies will need to entice the god Anansi, the Weaver, to come out of hiding and seal the hole in the sky. But bartering with the trickster Anansi always comes at a price.

Can Tristan save this world before he loses more of the things he loves?

About the Author

Kwame is a husband, father, writer, a New York Times bestselling author, and a former pharmaceutical metrologist in that order. His debut middle-grade novel, TRISTAN STRONG PUNCHES A HOLE IN THE SKY was awarded a Coretta Scott King Author Honor, and it—along with the sequels TRISTAN STRONG DESTROYS THE WORLD and TRISTAN STRONG KEEPS PUNCHING, out October 5th—is published by Rick Riordan Presents/Disney-Hyperion. He is the co-author of LAST GATE OF THE EMPEROR with Prince Joel Makonnen, from Scholastic Books, and the editor of the #1 New York Times bestselling anthology BLACK BOY JOY, published by Delacourte Press. A Howard University graduate and a Midwesterner now in North Carolina, he survives on Dad jokes and Cheezits.

You can learn more about him on his website kwamembalia.com

The Wise Owl Tween Book Club meets every month to discuss a book club pick with the author. Learn more about the book club here.