Kepler's Dream by Juliet Bell

Sometimes there is nothing in a book's title that would make a person want to choose the book when they see it on a shelf.. I think Kepler's Dream is one of those books. I chose to read it because I had read the reviews and it sounded pretty good. And it is a good book. It's a very good book and I think everyone who picks it up will enjoy the story. It's about eleven-year-old Ella, whose mother will be undergoing extreme treatment for leukemia. Ella's father hasn't really been a "dad" and is very busy as a guide for fishing expeditions. One grandma is dead, and the other one, Ella's father's mother, is a stranger. Ella has never met her. Yet that's where Ella is sent to spend the summer (she calls it Broken Family Camp) while her mother prepares for and undergoes a stem cell transplant.
Kepler refers to a mathematician/astronomer who lived in the late 1500s and early 1600s. Dream is the title of one of his books, considered to be the first science fiction book ever written. So how are the two connected? Ella's grandmother, Violet Von Stern, owns one of the few existing copies of Kepler's Dream (along with thousands of other rare books she has acquired. So many that she built a separate building on her land for a library!) One night, in the middle of the night, the book disappears.
But this book isn't just about finding a lost book. It's about Ella and her grandmother getting to know each other; making new friends, understanding things about her father and his family that she has never known, and figuring out her place in her somewhat unsettled world. I especially liked seeing the relationship between Ella and her grandmother evolve.
They say you can't judge a book by its cover, and sometimes you shouldn't judge a book by its title. Give this book a try. I think you'll like it.

AR Level 5.1
AR Points 9