The Sun Is Also a Star

• Genre: Fiction; young adult contemporary
• Originally Published: 2016
• Reading Level/Interest: Lexile 650L; grades 9-12
• Structure/Length: Prologue, 129 chapters, epilogue; approx. 384 pages; approx. 8 hours, 4 minutes on audio
• Protagonist/Central Conflict: Natasha Kingsley and Daniel Bae, two teens in New York City, meet at a record store while waiting for different appointments. They spend the next several hours talking about love and destiny. Natasha, practical and interested in science, is about to be deported along with her family. Daniel, while interested in writing poetry, is the son of Korean immigrants who would like him to become a doctor. When the universe pushes them together, they learn that a million futures lie before them and that one moment can change their lives forever.
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Illegal immigration; deportation

Nicola Yoon, Author

• Bio: Jamaican American author; grew up in Jamaica and in Brooklyn, New York; majored in electrical engineering at Cornell University; attended the Master of Creative Writing program at Emerson College; worked as a programmer for investment management firms for 20 years before the publication of her first book; wrote her first book, Everything, Everything, because she wanted to write a book that reflected her biracial child on the pages; it spent 40 weeks on the New York Times best seller list and was released as a feature film
• Other Works: Everything, Everything (2015); Blackout (2021); Instructions for Dancing (2021)
• Awards: National Book Award for Young People’s Literature finalist (2016); Printz Award honor (2017); Walter Dean Myers Award honor (2017); John Steptoe New Talent Award (2017)