STAY ALIVE ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE MOON

What happens when you get the one thing you wanted most in life? Lonely 16-year-old farm girl Barbara Winton has been following one reality show for years. Then in an instant she goes from fangirl to participant when the call comes from Dr. Keegan Bright: She’s been selected out of a horde of applicants to join him on the Moon.

She’ll be one of his Bright Sparks, six students with expertise in STEM and plenty of their own ingenuity chosen to work with Dr. Bright and given big responsibilities to undertake new projects important to the growth of the colony. Her first task? Build a radar telescope using an entire crater on the far side of the Moon.

But Barbara soon learns that life on a burgeoning frontier outpost like the Moon is a far cry from safe, civilized Earth. The loner from farm country must find a way to weld a functional team out of fiercely independent thinkers. Not only are they a bit trickier to work with than farm robots, not only is the working environment incredibly dangerous—she also has to perform this miracle in front of millions of fans. . . .

Lexile Score: 770

Barbara Winton and the rest of the Bright Sparks, Dr. Keegan Bright’s team of young scientists, find themselves facing a challenge that will test all of their scientific skills and personal courage. They are competing in the first ever race to completely circle the Moon. The Sparks, and twenty-five other teams, have to count on one another as they face thousands of kilometers of unknown dangers, where even a simple accident can have fatal consequences. They form close friendships with racers from all over Earth, but also have to deal with former Spark, Pam, a mysterious and threatening figure whose departure from the Sparks program is shrouded in mystery.

While the Sparks compete in the race, Dr. Bright himself is part of a groundbreaking project to seek out rare minerals underneath a crater. On the far side of the Moon, in the airless, frozen depths beneath the lunar surface, disaster strikes. On the thinly settled Moon only the Bright Sparks may be close enough to help him. The young scientist find themselves not only racing for victory, but to save their beloved mentor.