Candace, the Universe, and Everything

By Sherri L. Smith

A speculative middle grade novel about three generations of Black girls connected across time and space through a wormhole in their school locker.

What if your locker was a wormhole to the past?

On the first day of eighth grade, Candace Wells opens her locker and is astonished when an unusual bird flies out. Soon after, a notebook mysteriously appears on the top shelf, labeled Tracey Auburn, 1988. Stranger still, as Candace reads the notebook, new messages start to appear.

Professor Tracey Auburn only vaguely remembers a bird flying into her locker in eighth grade, way back in 1988, and losing a notebook she could have sworn she put on the top shelf. Until Candace shows up at her office with the missing notebook forty years later.

Quantum physicist Loretta Spencer will never forget the bird flying out of her locker in eighth grade in 1948. Her life's work has been to study the portal and others like it, and now she needs Tracey's and Candace's help to complete her research.

So begins an unlikely friendship and a hunt around Chicago and the state of Illinois to uncover the secrets of the locker, the universe, and everything. One thing's for sure: Eighth grade will never be the same again.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1524737933
• ISBN13: 9781524737931
• Release Date: September 2025
• Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Age Range: 10 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 5 and higher