Experience a new copy of The Total Eclipse of Nestor Lopez by Adrianna Cuevas, as featured in our 2026 May Tween "Talking to Animals" box!

Genre(s): Magical Realism, Latin American Folk Tale 
Target Audience:  8 - 12 years
Publication Date: September 21, 2021
Publisher: Square Fish
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1250791856
Pages: 320
Language: English

About the Book

2021 Pura Belpré Honor Book
NYPL Best Book of 2020
2020 Evanston Public Library Great Books for Kids

In this magical middle-grade debut novel from a Cuban American boy must use his secret ability to communicate with animals to save the inhabitants of his town when they are threatened by a tule vieja, a witch that transforms into animals.

All Nestor Lopez wants is to live in one place for more than a few months and have dinner with his dad.

When he and his mother move to a new town to live with his grandmother after his dad’s latest deployment, Nestor plans to lay low. He definitely doesn’t want to anyone find out his deepest secret: that he can talk to animals.

But when the animals in his new town start disappearing, Nestor's grandmother becomes the prime suspect after she is spotted in the woods where they were last seen. As Nestor investigates the source of the disappearances, he learns that they are being seized by a tule vieja―a witch who can absorb an animal’s powers by biting it during a solar eclipse. And the next eclipse is just around the corner…

Now it’s up to Nestor’s extraordinary ability and his new friends to catch the tule vieja―and save a place he might just call home.