The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera

This is a dystopian story that opens around the year 2150 and then the setting moves to the year 2600. Earth is in danger in 2150 and civilisation is disintegrating. It is now too late to save life on earth especially since a comet - Halley’s Comet -  is on a collision course to destroy everything. A unnamed group of officials decide to save a group of people and send them to a distant planet. These people will be 'reprogrammed' with the  hope to end all wars and unrest and make everyone equal. It will take many generations for these people to reach Sagan.  But as is always the pattern in a dystopian novel equality doesn’t mean everyone’s the same. Equality and a peaceful world sound great but the danger is in what people will do to make that happen. As a Goodreads reviewer says: "The book is political in that many, many science fiction stories are political. The book is essentially a dystopia set on a spaceship and another planet. Dystopias are almost always political because they show us power gone sour."

"You won't even know any time has passed when we're up there. ... This sleep will last three hundred and eighty years."

"One hundred and forty-six people ... is all it takes for humans to continue with enough genetic diversity ... "

Petra and her family are put into stasis pods. There are Monitors on each ship who keep it running but they won't make it to Sagan. 

"El Cognito's downloadable cognisance puts the organs and brain to sleep immediately. The gel preserves tissue indefinitely, removing senescent cells and waste. It not only provides nutrients and oxygen the body will need for such a long stay in stasis, but lidocaine in the gel numbs never endings making the gel's colder temperature comfortable upon awakening."

Over the hundreds of years in this 'frozen' state the brains are filled with information to aid survival on the new planet and old memories are supposed to be purged but Petra keeps her memories of Earth and more importantly she keeps her memories of the stories - she indeed the last storyteller - the last cuentista.  Her stories will save her life and the life of the four other surviving children. 

Sagan feels like the garden of Eden but the climate is strange with hours of dangerous winds and the possibility of dangerous animals and plants but life on this planet will be so much better then living under the control of the Monitors and paying subservience to The Collective. 

Read this School Library Journal review by Betsy Bird and this one on Charlotte's Library blog. I agree with her comment: It is not a comfortable read. It is a powerful, wrenching, disturbing one. I couldn't read it all in one sitting. I am wavering between three and four stars. 

Bookseller blurb: There lived a girl named Petra Pena, who wanted nothing more than to be a storyteller, like her abuelita. But Petra's world is ending. Earth will soon be destroyed by a comet, and only a few hundred scientists and their children - among them Petra and her family - have been chosen to journey to a new planet. They are the ones who must carry on the human race. Hundreds of years later, Petra wakes to this new planet - and the discovery that she is the only person who remembers Earth. A sinister Collective has taken over the ship during its journey, bent on erasing the sins of humanity's past. They have systematically purged the memories of all aboard - or purged them altogether. Petra alone now carries the stories of our past, and with them, any hope for our future. Can she make them live again?

Here is a very detailed set of teacher notes with questions for each chapter. 

This book has received so many award including the BIG one - the Newbery Medal.

• Winner of the John Newbery Medal 
• Winner of the Pura Belpré Award 
• Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Year 
• Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Best of the Year 
• Boston Globe’s Best of the Year 
• BookPage’s Best of the Year 
• Publishers Weekly’s Best of the Year 
• School Library Journal’s Best of the Year 
• Kirkus Reviews’ Best of the Year 
• Bank Street’s Best of the Year 
• Chicago Public Library’s Best of the Best 
• New York Public Library Best of the Year 
• A Junior Library Guild Selection 
• Cybils Award Finalist 

I did find this book quite difficult to read because I am not a fan of interwoven folktales - I keep thinking I am supposed to make important connections between these stories and Petra's present awful reality. The two covers above are the US and UK editions. 

Here are some companion reads:

This book is very old and long out of print but it is such a powerful story. 

Forbidden Memories - this book is sadly long out of print

This is an Australian book and sadly it is also long out of print.

Here is another amazing Australian Science Fiction book - and yes it is out of print

The Future Trap

The Last Human