The Art Thieves

Nnedi Okorafor meets Angeline Boulley in this gripping story of hope (and time travel!) amid climate collapse

BEST OF THE YEAR: Shelf Awareness * Cooperative Children's Book Center

TO: Angel Wilson (LawAngel@IBLO.gov)
FROM: Stevie Henry (shenry@gmail.com)
Thanks for coming to see me; but by the time you read this, it will be too late. No one will have started to panic, yet; but in less than two months nothing will be the same. What came first, The Chicken or the Egg Flu? I wish it mattered. But let's just say, maybe go back to wearing a mask, bathing in sanitizer, and avoid birds and eggs for a bit...

I did not kill my brother. I did quite the opposite, really.

It's the year 2052. Stevie Henry is a Cherokee girl working at a museum in Texas, trying to save up enough money to go to college. The world around her is in a cycle of drought and superstorms, ice and fire ... but people get by. But it's about to get a whole lot worse.

When a mysterious boy shows up at Stevie's museum saying that he's from the future -- and telling her what is to come -- she refuses to believe him. But soon she will have no choice.

From the author of the Walter Award-winning Man Made Monsters comes a YA novel that conjures our futures in startling life - the ones that we are headed towards, and the ones we can still work towards.

P R A I S E

"The Art Thieves is a book that is both exciting to read and deeply thoughtful about our reality as well as the larger literary landscape of post-apocalyptic fiction. I couldn't put it down, and as soon as I finished reading, I wanted to find something else like it. I even found myself hoping that Rogers might be working on a series. The Art Thieves is reminiscent of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and is in conversation with Afrofuturism more broadly."
-- Southern Review of Books

★ "Rogers employs smart and empathetic prose to present a realistically rendered science fiction tale that is at once adrenaline-pumping and emotionally moving. In this gripping adventure, Rogers considers the future of Indigenous heritage via an indomitable protagonist who, alongside a plethora of memorably realized characters, navigates tough issues relating to death, familial turmoil, exploitation, and climate collapse."
-- Publishers Weekly (starred)

★ "A stirring story about choosing to create a new future when disaster seems inevitable Rogers's sophomore YA novel skillfully discusses the current affairs, pop culture, and climate-change related extreme weather events of the future and powerfully relates them to historical and contemporary legacies of racism and oppression.... Award-winning author Andrea L. Rogers paints a stunning picture of what it means to hope for a better future and the strength it might take to make that future real."
-- Shelf-Awareness (starred)

"Sharp social commentary folded into an all-too-believable dystopian setting."
--Kirkus

Author: Andrea L. Rogers
Publisher: Levine Querido
Published: 10/08/2024
Pages: 400
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.65lbs
Size: 8.50h x 6.00w x 1.30d
ISBN: 9781646143788
Audience: Young Adult


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 07/29/2024
Booklist 08/01/2024 pg. 70
Kirkus Reviews 08/15/2024
Bulletin of Ctr for Child Bks 10/01/2024
School Library Journal 10/01/2024 pg. 79
Shelf Awareness 12/12/2024
Horn Book Magazine 01/01/2025 pg. 91
Hornbook Guide to Children 01/01/2025 - Superior,Well Above Average

About the Author

Andrea L. Rogers is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. She grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma and graduated with an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Her picture book, Chooch Helped, was awarded the Caldecott Medal. Andrea's collection of horror stories, Man Made Monsters, received six starred reviews and won the Walter Dean Myers Award for Young Adult fiction. She is also the author of the YA novel The Art Thieves.

Author residence: Fayetteville, AR