^ Emily’s Recommended Space Books for Kids
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For kids age 4 to 7 I look for two kinds of books. One type is for early readers, books with relatively simple words and syntax that children can learn to read themselves. The other is read-aloud story or poetry books, which introduce children to story structures and to the joy of the sounds of words and rhythms of sentences. I’ll accept the occasional bit of bad poetry in baby books, but my standard for the quality of the writing for preschool and kindergarten-age children’s books is high. I want books that love words, that reward a child who is learning to read with enticing stories and sounds.

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New to the List in 2022

More recommendations coming soon!

The Stuff Between the Stars: How Vera Rubin Discovered Most of the Universe (2021)

By Sandra Nickel, illustrated by Aimée Sicuro
My review on LibraryThing 🪐🪐🪐🪐🪐
ISBN: 1419736264

Now I wish I had met Vera Rubin. This biography paints a picture of a scientist passionate about answering her own questions and paying little heed to the unfair criticism levied against her. Scoffed at and ignored, Rubin nevertheless continued asking questions and studying the behaviors of galaxies, through raising four children, to walking in and demanding a job at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Her work yielded the discovery of dark matter and revealed that astronomers had been studying only a small part of the universe. “Vera was no longer at the edge of astronomy,” writes author Sandra Nickel. “She was at its very center.” The mixed media illustrations combine fluid brushstrokes and precise cut-paper edges, rewarding close examination. As an aside, I can’t recall that I’ve ever seen a pregnant astronomer depicted in a kids’ book before, and I loved seeing that!

Goodnight, Astronaut (2021)

By Scott Kelly
My review on LibraryThing 🪐🪐🪐🪐🪐
ISBN: 1524764280

The conceit of this book is simple: Astronaut Scott Kelly writes about all the places he’s slept in his life: from childhood bed to Navy ship to the Shuttle, and even “a quick combat nap” in the cockpit of a Tomcat! Kelly’s life has been a wonderful series of adventures featuring remarkable places to sleep. But that’s not all this book is. The writing. It’s so good. The vocabulary is mostly simple, but it reads like unrhymed blank verse; from the second page I had to read it to myself aloud to enjoy the rhythm and feel of the language. It masterfully deploys consonance, assonance, and alliteration to set a mood. It’s a perfect bedtime read-aloud.

The Boy Whose Head Was Filled With Stars: A Life of Edwin Hubble (2021)

By Isabelle Marinov, illustrated by Deborah Marcero
My review on LibraryThing 🪐🪐🪐🪐🪐
ISBN: 1592703178

This straightforwardly told biography of Edwin Hubble also explains the basics of a couple of his most significant discoveries in terms even science-phobic parents can understand. It may surprise some readers of a book with “Hubble” in the title that there are no jaw-dropping photographs of colorful nebulae in it; the lovely illustrations are all in watercolor and ink, and every star and galaxy is no more than white speckles on a black background. This is a feature, not a bug; Edwin Hubble, of course, did not have the Hubble Space Telescope to study the sky with, he “only” had the (then) world’s largest telescope, on Mount Wilson, through which he beheld the speckles of stars on the blackness of the sky. There are two gimmicks to the book that are very effectively deployed. There is a centerfold at the narrative moment of Hubble’s discovery of the expansion of the universe, emphasizing the way that the space between galaxies is getting bigger. And every time there is a scientific question, the text is set off in a metallic print, making the questions — and the asking of them — extra special. There are extensive author’s notes and extra information in the back.

Drop: An Adventure Through the Water Cycle (2021)

By Emily Kate Moon
My review on LibraryThing 🪐🪐🪐🪐🪐
ISBN: 0803741448

Okay, it’s not a space topic, but it’s a planetary science topic, and an important one. This delightful book about the water cycle is narrated by Drop, who’s been around for the entire age of the Earth in one form or another: in rivers, lakes, glaciers, icebergs, clouds, rain, dinosaurs, and kids. The narration explains where Drop is going, while Drop makes little remarks with every adventure: “Drop has been glaciers… {Are we there yet?} and icebergs… {Guess I gotta be cool with this!} …for a long, long time.” It’s an interesting, zoomed-in perspective on the water cycle, beginning not with the whole confusing landscape of all the possible sources and sinks of water, but just following the local journey of a single drop. You may be wondering whether introducing the water cycle to 5-year-olds matters. It does; science education research has established the importance of natural cycles as a unifying theme in kids’ education, and curricula return to it with increasing complexity year after year. This book is a lovely introduction to the idea of something that is neither created nor destroyed, just moves around Earth from one place to another, forever.

The Big Bang Book (2020)

By Asa Stahl, illustrated by Carly Allen-Fletcher
My review on LibraryThing 🪐🪐🪐🪐🪐
ISBN: 1939547644

Favorites from Previous Years

Field Trip to the Moon (2019)

By John Hare
My review on LibraryThing 🪐🪐🪐🪐🪐
ISBN: 0823442535

Oh my gosh I love this book. It is an anti-book. It is gloriously illustrated and has no text, telling a story in pictures about a school field trip (complete with a space shuttle painted school-bus yellow), during which a kid (of indeterminate gender, though fair-skinned and freckled) gets left behind on the Moon with their crayons. Aliens appear and much is communicated (evidently; again, there are no words) and the child is picked up at the end, but not without a twist in the story. Depending on how the pictures are read, the ending could be happy or sad.

There are several ways this book could be read. A pre-reading child could read it to the adults in their life, writing the story to fit the pictures for themselves. An adult could tell the story straight, as implied by the pictures. I know how I’d read it, once in a while: I’d try to tell the story using dialogue that is completely irrelevant to the pictures, prompting an outcry of “no, that’s not right!” from my kid, and then I’d invite them to give me better dialogue. Or, since most of the characters are aliens, I could choose to make them say nonsense alien words, just for the giggles that would ensue. Neep norp! Goggle flurg banana.

Rover Throws a Party (2020)

By Kristin L. Gray, illustrated by Scott Magoon
My review on LibraryThing 🪐🪐🪐🪐🪐
ISBN: 0525646485

A fun story written as journal entries by the Curiosity NASA Mars rover planning its first birthday party. It makes friends with rocks, invites a dust devil to the bash, and simulates lighting birthday candles with zaps of its laser. Each two-page spread has a short entry in language accessible to beginning readers, and a longer paragraph with a relevant fact about the mission. There are several factual errors in those longer paragraphs, unfortunately, but they don’t diminish the fun of the book, and they aren’t dealbreakers. Aside from those errors, the book would really help a parent or teacher answer kids’ questions about what rovers do on Mars. I love a kids’ book that can teach parents as they read to their kids.

A Fort on the Moon (2020)

By Maggie Pouncey, illustrated by Larry Day
My review on LibraryThing 🪐🪐🪐🪐🪐
ISBN: 0823446573

The text of this story fully immerses itself in the imaginations of two young brothers as they sneak up to the roof, board a contraption built from household junk, and fly to the Moon. The parents appear only briefly in the book’s beginning, indulgent and know-it-all; but these are kids who Know What They Are About; they are planning a trip to the Moon, and they don’t need their parents’ help. Once there, they encounter engineering challenges (they didn’t bring enough tape), they make “moon angels” in the surface dust, and then they return. The book is as much a celebration of childhood pretend play and imagination as it is a book about lunar exploration. The text is mostly straightforward, with short sentences and mostly simple words, with a few challenging ones salted in to stretch a kid’s vocabulary. It’d be perfect for a beginning reader to read aloud with help from an adult for the harder words.

Heart on Pluto (2020)

By Karl Jones, illustrated by Andrew J. Ross
My review on LibraryThing 🪐🪐🪐🪐🪐
ISBN: 0593096290

The story of the New Horizons mission, told in a form accessible to young children (I’d say ages 3 to 6). The text is very simple and spare, especially in the beginning, making it a good read-aloud book for children just developing language. On most pages there are tiny bits of “spoken” words from the New Horizons spacecraft itself, which would be fun to do in different voices, or to ask a new reader to read aloud. The page on New Horizons’ launch makes you tip the book sideways to see the whole rocket. It’s heart-meltingly cute and perfect for in-the-lap reading together.

Caroline’s Comets: A True Story (2020)

By Emily Arnold McCully
My review on LibraryThing 🪐🪐🪐🪐⚪
ISBN: 082344676X

This biography of astronomer Caroline Herschel is well told, rich with facts, and beautifully illustrated, but I have a couple of quibbles. First, the facts of her life are told very dryly, without suggesting to the reader in any way that they stop to consider the relationship between her and her brother astronomer William Herschel, whom she served as housekeeper and research assistant for decades — was it fair? Did he treat her well, or was he taking advantage? The answers are complicated but the questions aren’t beyond the ability of children to discuss, and “fair” is a concept that all young children are deeply invested in. Second, all but the last page of the book discusses her life in context with her brother. Once he is out of the picture and she is finally an independent scientist, it covers the rest of her life in a single page. She had a long and productive life after has death — despite emphasizing her ability independent of her brother, once he’s gone the book is no longer interested in her. Finally, although the book is titled “Caroline’s Comets,” it doesn’t say anything about the nature of comets, her particular discoveries, or how she discovered them with the tools she had to hand. I would have given it three stars, but I am boosting it one star because it includes delightful excerpts from her diary, bringing the reader closer to the woman herself and making it a primary source and not just a secondary source for kid research.

The Moon Show (2020)

By Carmen Gloria
My review on LibraryThing 🪐🪐🪐🪐⚪
ISBN: 1950767086

Earth’s Moon emcees stage appearances by many of the solar system’s moons, interviewing each one. The Moon is Very Excited to Talk to Each One of Them and Talks with Lots of Exclamation Points! It’s a fun read-aloud book, giving the reader an opportunity to do different voices for the different moon characters. It’s also easy to imagine a strong first- or second-grade reader getting in to the voice, reading it aloud.