CLUES TO THE UNIVERSE

A twelve-year-old rocket scientist coping with the recent death of her father meets Benji, an introverted artist, and they start out on a mission to build a rocket and find Benji's long-absent father through a trail of his bestselling space comics.

Rosalind Ling Geraghty is a scientist. A rocket scientist, to be exact. And, as her astronomy-loving dad taught her, scientists always try to figure out the things they can't understand. But when he suddenly dies in an accident, Ro is left with a half-built rocket and a crater-sized ball of grief that she can't quite figure out how to deal with.

All Benji Burns wants is a) a lifetime supply of Red Vines and b) to somehow get his hands on the next issue of SpaceBound, his favorite comic book series of all time. When he discovers that the author of SpaceBound is, in fact, his long-lost father, he doesn't just want to figure out how that cliffhanger ends, but he wants to know if there's some way to reconnect with his dad.

Ro and Benji were only supposed to be unwilling science class partners. But a folder mix-up turns the unlikely pair into friends. Benji helps Ro build her ambitious rocket, and Ro helps Benji scour through his beloved comics and across the country to find out where his dad is.

CLUES TO THE UNIVERSE is about when art and science meet. It is about trying to find your place in the world, and about loving people and missing people and the lengths you'd go to get them back.

Christina Li, born in 2000, studies Economics at Stanford University (Class of 2021). In addition to writing, she has a penchant for setting off on road trips, watching sitcom reruns, and drinking too much jasmine green tea. Follow her on Twitter @CLiwrites.