Nina, a Lipan Apache teen, lives with her bookseller dad but often visits her grandmother on the family’s ancestral land. Nina has been working for years to translate her late great-great-grandmother’s stories from Lipan Apache and Spanish, knowing they hold truths she longs to understand. Oli is a cottonmouth snake living in the Reflecting World, or pseudo-earth. Animal spirits like Oli once moved freely back and forth between the two worlds, until earth became too dangerous. Now only a few risk the journey, taking on their false (human) form to bring back relics (books) to better understand the human world. Young Oli’s chosen family includes a gentle toad named Ami, mischievous coyote sisters Risk and Reign, and an irrepressible hawk named Brightest. When Ami grows ill, the friends know it means Ami’s species on earth is at risk of extinction. Nina recognizes the four distinct teens who arrive at her house as animal spirits in false form. She joins their effort to save Ami’s species, but a hurricane, intensified by climate change, is bearing down, putting Nina’s grandmother, who grows inexplicably ill if she leaves the family land, at risk. The group heads there to help, unaware that a man who lives nearby is a particular threat to Oli and his friends. Strong characterizations and terrific dialogue propel this complex and compelling tale alternating between Nina’s and Oli’s perspectives as it explores the importance of connection and stories in individual lives and collective understanding. (Age 12 and older)

Newbery Honor Winner

National Indie Bestseller

National Book Award Longlist

Minneapolis Star Tribune Best of the Year

Publishers Weekly Best of the Year

Kirkus Best the Year

Apple Best of the Year

Chicago Public Library's Best of the Best

New York Public Library's Best of the Year

Autostraddle's Best Queer Books of the Year



"A spellbinding tale."--Texas Monthly



"Genre-bending."--TIME



"Undeniably charming."--Tor.com



★ "Evokes the timeless feeling of listening to traditional oral storytelling."--Kirkus (starred)



★ "Fun, imaginative, and deeply immersive, this story will be long in the minds of readers."--Publishers Weekly (starred)



★ "Magical, stunning, and wholly original."--Booklist (starred)



"A highly descriptive story which absorbs the audience into its world, readers will become invested in reading until the very end."--School Library Connection



A Snake Falls to Earth is a breathtaking work of Indigenous futurism. Darcie Little Badger draws on traditional Lipan Apache storytelling structure to weave another unforgettable tale of monsters, magic, and family. It is not to be missed.



Nina is a Lipan girl in our world. She's always felt there was something more out there. She still believes in the old stories.



Oli is a cottonmouth kid, from the land of spirits and monsters. Like all cottonmouths, he's been cast from home. He's found a new one on the banks of the bottomless lake.



Nina and Oli have no idea the other exists. But a catastrophic event on Earth, and a strange sickness that befalls Oli's best friend, will drive their worlds together in ways they haven't been in centuries.



And there are some who will kill to keep them apart.