THE UNIVERSE ATE MY HOMEWORK

A girl who hates homework more than anything else in this universe creates an alternative one, with a few hints from her physicist dad.

Unable to escape her parents’ persistent reminders to get to work (they obviously know her well), Abby sneaks into her father’s study, follows his directions for creating a mini black hole (“Step 1. Choose anything you want to get rid of. Step 2. Squeeze it really, really hard”), and “POP!” turns her homework paper into a singularity. With the addition of some energy created by jumping up and down, the singularity becomes a baby universe complete with tiny stars and gas clouds. Abby almost leaps in, but when her understandably impressed dad admits that he wouldn’t know how to get her back, she decides to stay and instead joins both parents (who are now apparently willing to cut her some slack) in the yard for cuddles and stargazing. For budding astrophysicists, Zeltser tucks in simple descriptions of what black holes are and how they form, and Rubio ups the ante considerably with relevant equations from Hawking and Einstein on the study chalkboard. Topped by a wild nebula of red hair, Abby makes a moderately big bang all on her own (she and her parents are white), and chuckles will coalesce around her written explanation of what happened to her homework at the end, which is capped with her teacher’s inexplicably skeptical response.

Even readers who don’t share Abby’s aversion to homework will be sucked in.