Children's Space Books Books

I heartily recommend this book to anyone, adult or teenager, who wants
to know what it is really like to fly in space. One would think that astronaut autobiographies would talk about what it is really like to fly a mission, but only Mike Collins' book "Carrying the Fire" really does this. Bill Pogue's book is not an autobiography, but he does, in a question and answer format, tell the reader about the experiences of space flight. Pogue, along with fellow astronauts Gerald Carr and Ed Gibson flew the last Skylab mission leading to the then American record of 84 days in space. This gave Pogue plenty of time to think about his experiences (other astronauts who flew the much shorter duration Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions said that the fact that their flight plan was so crowded, they didn't really have time to absorb the experience).
One interesting thing is that Pogue mentions that he did have some problem with space sickness, but that within a day he was able to work
a full-day's schedule. Apparently, he was somewhat understating his problem because director of Flight Crew operations Deke Slayton who chose the flight crews, said in his book that this crew suffered more than others from this, and Pogue had it the worst which surprised Slayton since he had flown with the Thunderbirds, the Air Force's aerobatic team which puts planes and pilots through violent spins and dives. This shows that space sickness is a different phenomenon than regular air sickness.
Another interesting thing he points out that people don't think about is that once the space helmet is on, it is difficult to deal with itches on the head and face. The helmet does have a protrusion for the nose into which the astronaut can insert his in order blow in order to equalize the pressure inside the ears, and this protrusion can also serve to scratch the nose. However, he points out that his ears would also itch and there was no way to deal with this, except to try to think about something else.
After reading this book, I have to take my hat off to these men who endure the dangers and discomforts of space flight in order to push back
mankind's boundaries frontiers of knowledge.

Middle to High Schoolers as well as adults will pick this book up out of curiosity and immediately become engrossed. The question and answer format encourages browsing, and the book includes lots of nice features such as an index, a section for related reading, a section of web addresses and mail addresses for space related organizations. Students will find useful report information presented here in a fun format. The book also includes a number of photographs and drawings relating to the questions it helps answer. Students will discover the many effects of living in space from one of the men who has spent the most time there!

Great book for a middle school or high school library. Answers lots of frequently-asked questions about astronaut's life in space.

Heather Couper has scored a coup in writing this fun and exciting book to help you and your child be successful in school science. We used this book as a guide to a curriculum we wrote for a private school here in Washington. The students used to cheer when I came in the room with the lesson of the week which always came with an experiment from this book. Science was exciting and I never had any discipline problems. When you can properly engage a student and take away the fear of failure, you have won. This approach helped all the students but was especially impactful for the students with learning disabilities who struggled with the written word only approach. Get excited about science with your children! This book removes all fears.

This book teaches much information about the universe, from quasars to black holes. It has many, many experiments kids can use to learn about different planets and topics. Great book!

It was very hard to rate the books in this series, How the Universe included. In many ways, the book is excellent. The concepts and information are presented clearly and accurately, often in much more detail than usual in late elementary/early middle school. This series is produced by Dorling Kindersley, and though the organization is different (two-page spreads but with illustrated "experiments" and explanations rather that lots of picture-factoids), a flavor of the Eyewitness books remains.

HOWEVER, there are no experiments in this book. There are projects and demonstrations, but not one experiment. About 1/3rd to 1/4th of the activities are written as demonstrations that could be make into experiments with an adult's guidence so that a child is led to hypothesis and to test his hypothesis through experimentation, but as written, none of the activities can qualify. The remaining activities are either demonstrations that can't be easily turned into experiments or are simply projects, like making a telescope or a sundial. Some of the activities are also made ridiculously complicated and lengthy for the amount that a student would get out of it. For example, instead of sticking a sticker on a ball and turning the ball in the dark while illumated with a flashlight to show how day and night works, the child skewers a rubber ball to make an axis, uses two pieces of posterboard to place the axis at the exact right angle, paints the ball like the earth, puts a pin where he lives, and FINALLY, after several hours, uses a lamp to demonstrate something that without all the cutesy overhead would take less than a minute. Sure, you have a neat little globe as a result, but you just spent several lesson times on an activity that should have been a fraction of a lesson! The learning from the activity doesn't justify the time spent on it. Not every activity has this problem, but enough do that the overall effect is to lower the quality of the book.

Quite simply, this book would be a great resource for a flexible, knowledgable homeschool or institutional school teacher, but its educational usefulness exactly as it is written is limited by its flaws. On the basis of its flaws, I would give it a 2, but because of its great usefulness for the knowledgable user, I'd give it a 5. A 4 is a compromise.

The main topics in this book are:

Spaceship Earth
The Moon
The Solar System
The Sun
The Stars
The Cosmos

From the Back of the Book

Something Was Changing

But what thing? Something was happening in the house, with her brothers, herself. Out on the wide, sun-drenched lawn, down by the hedgerow, down by the black poisonous waters of the Quinella Trace... Something was stirring. What thing?

For eleven-year-old Justice the summer was becoming a dream and a nightmare - a hide-and-seek with a force she couldn't see. Alone in the house with her identical twin brothers, Justice knew they were hiding something from her, something they were afraid to let her know. It wasn't just Thomas with his angry stares or Levi disappearing the way he did. It was something (what-thing?) else...

It came upon her the morning of the Great Snake Race. A great gift has been bestowed on Justice and her brothers. Together they could be anything, anywhere - even in the future.

This is a fascinating book that I read as a child and recently reread (and purchased) as an adult. This book was one of the first I read of the 'fantasy' genre. It really sparked my interest in these types of books. I highly recommend it.

This is an excelent book,after a while you get sucked into another world where Justice,Thomas and Levi live.But after a while you might get lost in the strange plot.

I really liked this book. The characters were very fleshed out and I enjoyed having a strong female with a cautious male, it is nice to have things switched. It had alot of suspense, twist of characters, and some surprising discoveries. I felt like I could see the world she was creating and thought that bringing in so many fairytales, but with a unique play on them was fun.

Let's see... a magical world where messages are sent by owl... whoops, I mean by mice... The evil White Queen has ruled this world of Narnia -- sorry, I mean the evil Blue Queen, and the world is called Rondo -- and tries to lure Edmond and Lucy, I mean Leo and Mimi, into her magical lair where she can entrap them by freezing them. They spend much of the book wandering through the magical forest with a vain lion, no, a vain pig, as a sidekick. A trusty forest-dweller with a big axe comes to their rescue. They ultimately find their way back to our world through the wardrobe portal, actually, platform 9 and 3/4, wrong again, through a music box, and all is ultimately well. You get the idea. Not as good as the prototypes but still fun to read nevertheless.

This is a book for all ages. The plot develops at a fast pace and brings many surprises. The reader will not be able to lay the book down before the end! It tells of friendship, loyalty, courage and magic. It also tells of the fight to overcome the feelings of solitude and dejection.
A beautiful book, a beautiful story. For all ages.

The Last Grail Keeper was written by Pamla Smith Hill. Felicity came upon a great and powerful legend and she couldn't hold this power(Felicity a character). I thought the most unusual part of this story was when Morgan le Fay brought Felicity back to the King Author time. Felicity was in a long black hall. Felicity keep walking thorough this long black hall. Until she saw light. it was a fire, she saw some of the people she knew. Mostly the setting takes place in present day Glastonbury England. Most of the main character were Felicity her self, Felicity mom, and Miss Nimute. the story is told mostly by Felicity her self. By changing history the Holy Grail is in the future. which it should be in the past. A part of the story that was a theme was, Felicity had to bring the holy Grail in time. Reading this book was confusing but after reading for time it starts to make sense, that's why I say this book was enjoyable book, to read about the Grail.

The Last Grail Keeper by Pamela Smith Hill is an exciting adventure book told by an average twenty-first-century girl, Felicity Jones.Although she doesn't know it, Felicity is part of a long family line known as the Grail Keepers. This is a family of women who are destined to protect the Holy Grail. Now, the Grail may fall into the wrong hands and Felicity realizes that she must save it. With a little help from the past, she might be able to pull it off. This was an awsome book1 It is appropriate for anybody of any age who wants to learn a little more about King Arthur or just wants to enjoy a great book!

I recently read The Last Grail Keeper and I thought it was amazing! I literally couldn't put the book down. I can't wait for Pamela Smith Hill's next book!

This review is for the ABRIDGED recording.

The story moved along at a nice clip and the imagery was vivid enough but it was pretty much all action and not enough character interaction for me (maybe it was edited out). Mimi Rogers did a decent enough job of reading but at times it was difficult to tell who was who.

This is a 5 star book! it's great . the best book I READ SO FAR!!

What a great book! I have rarely seen a novelization that so closely matches the movie. There was only one extra subplot that I could spot and it didn't detract in any way from the rest of the story. the author is very good at describing the action scenes, especially the dogfight at the begining. Overall, a really great book, except I think that the author dwells too much on the romance angle, but she does provide us with some nice background info on the pilot, Don West. If you liked the movie, read the book, and vice versa.

This was a great way to end te series. A tantalizing taste of what magic could be like if it existed. 5 stars, and this authour is awesome. I will read anything else she comes out with.

At the start of this wonderful conclusion to a great fantasy trilogy, Reason Cansino is a lot of things most fifteen year olds aren't. She's magic. She's pregnant. And she may or may not be entirely human.

In this continuation of Reason's story, she is falling more and more deeply into the strange, ancient, and inhuman power given to her by Raul Cansino. She is becoming more and more scarily powerful--but she's giving up her humanity (and maybe that of her unborn child) for that power. She won't die young like so many magic-wielders who use their powers unwisely, and neither will she go crazy and end up in the loony-bin with her mother.

But is giving up her humanity worth it?

MAGIC'S CHILD is strictly a continuation of an already begun story. It is not a story within itself, really, and, as such, should only be picked up by those who have read the first two parts of the trilogy (Magic or Madness (Magic or Madness Trilogy) and Magic Lessons (Magic or Madness Trilogy)). If you haven't read those, well, they're highly recommended, as well!

Justine Larbalestier's third installment in the MAGIC OR MADNESS trilogy is a good conclusion to the story, one that will have readers racing through it as fast as possible. It was a little bit open-ended for my taste, but not in a terrible cliffhanger way. It was either a less than fabulous last chapter or a fabulous way to leave the door open for another book set in this universe; who knows? Either way, the characters, dialogue, and style of MAGIC'S CHILD are all great, it's well worth reading, and I'm looking forward to reading more from Justine Larbalestier.

Reviewed by: Jocelyn Pearce

Australian author Justine Larbalestier's first novel, Magic or Madness, challenged Reason - that is, to say, a teenage girl named Reason who spent her life with her cheery mother, until her lovely mother went a little mad. Reason realized that the stories her mom told her were true. Magic exists, and it runs through the veins of all of the women in her family. Either they use it and die young or they repress it and go mad.

Her grandmother, who is depicted as a villain in all of her mother's stories, takes Reason in when she has no other place to go. Reason then meets her gran's neighbor, a boy her own age, and Jay-Tee, who lives in New York - which magically appears outside of her grandmother's door. The story continued in Magic Lessons, when the stakes were raised and the powers of the main characters tested.

Now the final chapter in the Magic or Madness trilogy is here: Magic's Child. The title itself is a huge spoiler, obviously. I recommend that you read the trilogy in the proper order for the ultimate impact.

Each character gets his or her moment in the spotlight here as the story bounces back and forth between locations and viewpoints. I enjoyed Reason's travels around the world, confirming the presence of other doors and introducing her to another generation of magic-users. (Can you say spinoff?) I found myself liking Jay-Tee more and more as the story progressed. Even Sarafina has a memorable scene in which she creates butterflies. Such a childlike innocence about her then, making her greedy demeanor and evil actions only a short while later all the more scary.

Magic's Child pushes Reason's sanity and strength to the brink. Will she go past the point of no return? Has she any reason to stick around? Find out by reading the book, then share the magic of Reason's world and Larbalestier's writing with other fantasy fans.

This book can be thoroughly enjoyed by anyone, of any age. The photographs are awe inspiring, and frankly, they,alone, would be reason enough to own this book. Majestic Universe doesn't stop there however, it is filled with information. I have had the book for a few years now and have probably sat down with it over a hundred times and not once have I thought, "Welp, I'm done with this book. Time to sell it on Amazon." I'm going to keep this one.

The book is accessible to a novice but still presents some difficult concepts in easy to understand manner. Serge strikes a great balance in this regard ! The explanation of "Big bang" theory and the practical observations that back-up the theory is great ! The language is poetic sometimes, to keep the reading interesting and not being too dry. All in all, a good "introduction" book on Sun,stars,galaxies,clusters,big bang, and more .. There are lot of clear, full-page pictures and are well captioned.

This book is a beautiful rendition of the myriad wonders of our universe; replete with beautiful full color photos of various subjects discussed: the birth of stars from nebulae; the discussion of the possibility/probability/proof of extrasolar planetary systems, the discussions on what happens near black holes, and the history and future of what potential space exploration might bring, as well as what we might hope to discover in the future with current astronomical projects using such tools as the Hubble Space Telescope and the space station Freedom project. Chock full of goodness on the pictorial side, the book also explains concepts and introduces discussions in a manner both easy to understand for neophyte and pleasing to seasoned professional. A beautiful book and highly recommended for both ends of the experience spectrum with astronomy. Nice coffee table book that would be sure to generate discussion. :)

This book is one of the best scientific books for young minds you will ever find. All of the most important physical facts about the moon, the reasons why the shape of the moon cycles over time and the effects it has on Earth are explained. A brief history of lunar exploration is also given. Diagrams are used to provide detail to the explanations and they are colorful without being gaudy. This book is an excellent way for children to learn about the only other heavenly body that has felt the footsteps of humans.

This book is great for second language learners who need content information but lack high reading skills.

Very factual information written on the level of a 1st-4th grade child.

Good to use in the classroom in conjunction with a unit on space.

A young girl sits on the porch at night with her father. When he falls asleep, she takes a ride on the Moonhorse and they fly across the sky. The imaginary trip is related with poetic prose that is inconsistent; however, the chalk illustrations are quite beautiful, and introduce a few of the constellations. Lovely book.

It seems that I often go through my child's books and think, great story but illustrations are mediocre at best - or brilliant artwork for an odd story. Moonhorse is absolutely the most beautifully compatible blend of imaginative work of author and artist. To read this book is to recall a mysterious, yet delightful dream of my 1950's early childhood. I want to know how Pope Osborne and Saelig came together to do this and will they do 1,000 more?

This book is perfection! It is a dreamy and exhilarating combination of beautifully evocative artwork and imaginative, spare, yet poetic text. A little girl rocking on the front porch with her dad one starry summer night wishes on a star and the constellation Pegasus comes to life as a huge white horse with powerful milk-white wings and a flying mane and takes her on an adventure through the constellations. The atmosphere of the darkness, the whispy night clouds, the stars and the stillness completely transports one. The balance between the magical fantasy of the moonhorse and the natural and grounded personality of the child combine in a subtle way to make this fantastic journey happily believable. This book will become a favorite. Don't miss it!