The Extraordinary Orbit of Alex Ramirez — Jasminne Paulino

A powerful debut novel in verse about a neurodivergent seventh grader who dreams of traveling to the stars one day.

Seventh-grade Alex's favorite things to do are watching YouTube videos of rocket launches with his Papi and spending hours on the NASA website reading about astronauts and planets. He even dreams of going to space one day himself, and knows he'll have to study hard in order to get there.

But Alex is in his grade's SC (self-contained) classroom, which means doing the same dull worksheets every day and reading books his sister read back in the third grade. Worst of all, being in SC means nobody thinks he's ready to join Ms. Rosef's mainstream science class -- the class Alex knows will be the first step on his path to NASA.

When his teacher says "not yet" for the millionth time, Alex decides it's time to make a change. Now he's ready to try everything he can to get the people in his life -- his teachers, his parents, and the kids at school -- to understand that he, Alex Ramirez, is capable of the extraordinary.