Houston, We Have a Klutz!

Grace sneaks onto Apollo 11 with a little help from some surprising allies in this fourth wacky novel, part of the all-new In Due Time series. “Graceless Grace” is the smartest seventh grader at Sands Middle School, but she’s constantly being teased for stumbling over doorjambs and knocking over lunch trays. And lately, the name-calling has been even worse. So when Ms. Tremt offers to lend The Book of Memories to Grace for an extended trip, she decides to go completely out of this world. She travels back to 1969 to stow away on Apollo 11 and become the first kid, the first female, and maybe even the first person to walk on the moon. Take that, teasers! Sneaking onboard Apollo 11 without messing up the mission requires some serious brainpower. Luckily, Grace has something NASA doesn’t–a time portal. She opens up The Book of Memories and assembles her dream team: Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Hypatia of Alexandria, and works with them to reduce the cargo just enough to safely board the rocket. Apollo 11 leaves the atmosphere with 6,099,920 pounds of space ship and eighty pounds of middle school girl. Grace impresses Neil Armstrong with her smarts and dazzles the world with her spacewalk. After all, you can’t face-plant in zero gravity! But when Grace returns to the present, she’s dismayed to discover NASA has covered up her historic achievement. There is no mention of her in history books, no record of her spacewalk. Some things in history can’t be changed, explains Ms. Tremt, but people can change. And now, “Graceless Grace” has the confidence to redefine her reputation!