Donna Barba Higuera is an award-winning author who masterfully blends folklore with her lived experiences to create captivating stories for young readers. Growing up in the dust-filled oil fields of Central California, she spent her life weaving tales that sparked her imagination.
Now residing in the Pacific Northwest with her family and a lively menagerie of pets, Donna is the acclaimed author of picture books like El Cucuy Is Scared, Too! and The Yellow Handkerchief. Her middle-grade novels have garnered significant recognition: Lupe Wong Won't Dance received the Sid Fleischman Award for Humor and a Pura Belpré Honor, while her second novel, The Last Cuentista, was awarded both the John Newbery Medal and the Pura Belpré Award. The Last Cuentista was also named a Best Book of the Year by the Boston Globe, Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, and TIME. Her newest book Xolo reimagines the Aztec myth of the origin of man-and man's best friend.
The highly anticipated third and final book in The Cuentista series, Firesnake, is slated for release in Spring 2026.
"The Last Cuentista is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once,
and centers family, community, and the oral histories that keep us
together." --Tor.com
★ "Gripping, euphonious, and full of storytelling magic." -
Publishers Weekly (starred)
★ "Higuera spins a tale that crosses the depths of space,
interweaving Mexican folklore with a mystical strand of science
fiction." -- Kirkus (starred)
★ "Pura Belpré Honor-winning author Donna Barba Higuera (Lupe Wong
Won't Dance) deftly blends Mexican folklore with science fiction in
this thrilling and emotional post-apocalyptic novel." --
Shelf-Awareness (starred)
"The Last Cuentista is a beautiful middle grade story of a young
Latina who must leave a no longer inhabitable Earth and learns the
importance of adapting. Although this is a middle-grade dystopian
novel, it is poetically magical while honoring the storytelling of
our ancestors and Mexican folklore. The story is fun, vibrant, and
relatable. Captivating the reader to partake in a voyage of
unforgettable cuento (which means 'story' in English of what it
means to adapt, believe, and find one's self." -- Al Dia News
"A beautifully told story of what makes us human." -- Minneapolis
Star Tribune
"Clever and compelling ... wonderfully subversive." - The Wall
Street Journal
"Petra Peña is twelve when she and her family board one of the last
ships leaving Earth just before its imminent destruction by comet.
As the remaining Earthlings struggle to survive, all of the cuentos
-- stories -- Petra grew up listening to will turn out to be more
powerful than she could have imagined in this thrilling and hopeful
work of science fiction." -- Boston Globe
"Readers will find in The Last Cuentista a promise that the past is
not the enemy of the future, but a gift that grants the perspective
to meet that future with compassion and bravery." -- Bookpage
"The brilliance of Higuera's narrative is that it shows rather than
tells us the power of story. As Petra shares her tales and they
guide her shipmates out of darkness, readers will find corners of
their own hearts illuminated as well. This book is gripping in its
twists and turns, and moving in its themes -- truly a beautiful
cuento." -- New York Times
"Truly good children's books engage and entertain while also
helping young readers come to understand themselves and the
complicated world they live in. The best picture, middle grade and
young adult books of 2021 deftly rise to that challenge, telling
stories about identity, allyship and more... Donna Barba Higuera's
The Last Cuentista asks kids to consider the danger of adopting
dogmatic beliefs without questioning authority figures." -- Time
Magazine
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