In Paloma Vistamontes’ beloved Southern California hometown, acronyms like AQA, HEPA and N95 are uttered as often as WTF and OMG in the halls of San Fermin High. This is because, during Air Quality Alert days, school is canceled and everyone must use High Efficiency Particulate Air filters and N95 respirator masks.
San Fermin was once dotted with shops and homes, farms and gardens—until e-commerce giant Selva began demolishing apartment complexes and paving over horse pastures to erect massive gray warehouses, grossly polluting the area in the process. Now Selva wants to put a warehouse next to her school, and Paloma is angry and afraid.
As Paloma muses throughout Few Blue Skies, “to some, like my pa, it was just asthma, just allergies, just nosebleeds. But to others, to Julio’s family, it was lung cancer. It was death.”
Julio, Paloma’s childhood friend and ex-boyfriend, broke up with Paloma after his father’s funeral last year, but she still misses him every day. She worries about her parents, too: The monthslong strike Pa is co-leading against Selva is worsening his health and jeopardizing his marriage to Ma, who longs to leave San Fermin.
Then Julio asks her to team up for the Projects for Purpose scholarship competition, which will require long hours together over several months. It’s an opportunity to bring national attention to San Fermin and earn major money for college tuition, but can Paloma trust Julio not to hurt her once again?
Author and educator Carolina Ixta, who won a Pura Belpré Award for her young adult debut, Shut Up, This Is Serious, writes movingly and empathetically of the joy and pain of first love, and the challenges and costs of taking a principled stand.
As she explains in a sobering author’s note, Few Blue Skies was inspired by a real-life California community that suffers from “racism in urban planning . . . [which] is never coincidental.” She reminds readers that “warehouses do not sprout from soil.” In Ixta’s beautifully written tale of a town in trouble and a girl who never stops pushing for a better future, she plants the seeds of advocacy, perseverance and hope.