A Bucket of Stars by Suri Rosen

A story of two kids trying to save the world they know and heal the families they have.

It’s the summer of 2003 and thirteen-year-old astronomer Noah Cooper has just moved to Queensport, a small town with a vast amateur sky full of stars. There he meets Tara Dhillon, a lonely girl and aspiring filmmaker. When the two team up to produce an astronomy movie and enter a film contest, they discover a secret plan to turn their rural hamlet into a huge subdivision.

Noah and Tara must use their unique skills to identify the culprits who plan on paving over the historic county — and try to save the infinite beauty of the stars. As if that’s not enough to have at stake, Noah needs to win the prize money to buy a new telescope for his unemployed father — an ex-astronomer who’s almost given up on the stars, as well as life on earth.

Touching on themes of activism, environmental anxiety and mental health, A Bucket of Stars will have readers cheering for Noah, a boy whose head is in the stars, and Tara, a girl who lives in a world of digital images — and their special bond that just might mend the world around them.

SURI ROSEN is the author of My Best Friend and Other Illusions, a Canadian Children's Book Centre Best Book for Teens and a TD Summer Reading Club Top Recommended Read. Her first novel, Playing with Matches, won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Youth Literature. Suri writes feature articles and short stories for various magazines and newspapers and has worked as a professional artist, filmmaker, journalist, and TV producer. She lives in Toronto with her family and six imaginary dogs—Great Danes all.