Meerkat Moonship by Hanneke Schutte

7.29

Timid, wildly imaginative 13-year-old Gideonette de La Rey learns that the name she was given comes with it a horrible curse. After her father dies, Gideonette is paralyzed by fear and is sent to live on a farm in the forest with her grandparents where she befriends a young deaf boy who is “training” to become an astronaut and preparing to fly away in a Moonship that Gideonette’s grandfather had built.