A Snake Falls to earth
Newbery Award Honor
National book Award Longlist
National Bestseller
Nina is a Lipan girl in our world. She’s always felt there was something more out there. She still believes in the old stories. Oli is a cottonmouth kid, from the land of spirits and monsters. Like all cottonmouths, he’s been cast from home. He's found a new one on the banks of the bottomless lake.
Nina and Oli have no idea the other exists. But a catastrophic event on Earth, and a strange sickness that befalls Oli’s best friend, will drive their worlds together in ways they haven’t been in centuries. And there are some who will kill to keep them apart.
A Snake Falls to Earth is a breathtaking work of Indigenous futurism. Darcie Little Badger draws on traditional Lipan Apache storytelling structure to weave another unforgettable tale of monsters, magic, and family. It is not to be missed.
Type: Young Adult Novel
Pages: 384
Format: Paperback
Publication: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781646144136
Type: Young Adult Novel
Pages: 384
Format: Hardcover
Publication: November 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64614-092-3
PRAISE
National Indie Bestseller
Newbery Award honor
National Book Award Longlist
Minneapolis Star Tribune Best of the Year
Publishers Weekly Best of the Year
Kirkus Best the Year
Apple Best of the Year
Chicago Public Library’s Best of the Best
New York Public Library’s Best of the Year
YALSA BEST FICTION FOR YOUNG ADULTS
CCBC CHOICES
“A spellbinding tale.” —Texas Monthly
“Genre-bending.”—TIME
“Undeniably charming.”—Tor.com
★ “Evokes the timeless feeling of listening to traditional oral storytelling.”
—Kirkus (starred)
★ “Fun, imaginative, and deeply immersive, this story will be long in the minds of readers.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred)
★ “Magical, stunning, and wholly original.”
—Booklist (starred)
“Masterfully woven together...an imaginative and multilayered work of speculative fiction.”
—Horn Book
“A highly descriptive story with open dialogue which absorbs the audience into its world, readers will become invested in reading until the very end.”
—School Library Connection
“Little Badger maintains an effective balance between the magic of the animal people’s holding a tornado at bay and the futility of undoing years of damage to the planet. The take on technology is interesting and modern, with Nina attempting to win beaucoup bucks from a video-based app with a staged bear attack and using her translator app to crack a dying language. The baddie is a little predictable, but it’s made up for by a more realistic ending that exhorts people with the millions to influence climate change and turn the tide.”
—BCCB
“Her work is magical for all ages.”
—Den of Geek
“Both authentic and original. Strong, subtle worldbuilding allows readers to immerse themselves in Nina’s near future world of increased climate change and advanced social media technology and in Oli’s magical world of spirits, monsters, and old stories come to life.”
—The Hub (a YALSA Blog)
“Like Elatsoe, it gives us a completely original universe to explore, and characters that are easy to love. It feels a little more nested in traditional tale telling, but I love the connection between current technology and the vibrant Reflected World -- that reminder that while traditional tales may be ancient in origin, they are not stale or irrelevant to modern listeners. I particularly enjoyed Nina's bookstore and her family and her Grandmother's connection to their family's land. Beautiful and satisfying, with a strong message about extinction. As someone who grew up in Texas, I never thought I could care for a cottonmouth character, but Oli changed my mind.”
—Jenny Craig, Seattle Public Library
“A Snake Falls to Earth is nothing short of a minor miracle of character and world building! Out of the simple animal-people archetypes of Native American legend―snake, toad, hawk, coyote, bear―Darcie Little Badger has created whole, complex, funny, lovable characters. A small nearsighted cottonmouth becomes as sympathetic a hero as Jonas in The Giver. A simple mockingbird turns out to be as perplexing and powerful a force as Loki in Norse mythology. And when the animal-people band together to save friends in both their world and ours, the end result is a renewed connection between myth and reality, one that feels all too necessary and welcome in these chaotic times.”
—Chris Abouzeid, Belmont Books
“I thought I couldn’t love anything more than Elatsoe, but Darcie Little Badger has proven me wrong. A dual narrative of a young teen in the human world, searching for the meaning of her great-great grandmother’s final story and dealing with Climate change in Texas, and a young snake living in the reflective world and setting out on his own. This book takes on real world issues while beautifully weaving in Lipan mythology and wrapping it all in a captivating story about the importance of community.”
—Katherine Nazzaro, Porter Square Books
About darcie little badger
Darcie Little Badger is an Earth scientist, writer, and fan of the weird, beautiful, and haunting. She is an enrolled member of the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas. Her Locus Award-winning debut novel, Elatsoe, was a National Indie Bestseller, named to over a dozen best-of-year lists, and called one of the Best 100 Fantasy Novels of All Time by TIME. Her second novel, A Snake Falls to Earth was longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature and received a Newbery Award Honor.
Follow Darcie on Instagram at @dr.littlebadger
Author Darcie Little Badger