Book picks similar to
Mars by Elaine Landau


mars
science
astronomy
childrens

Deep Future


Stephen Baxter - 1985
    Along the way Stephen Baxter looks at our place in the universe, considers the possibility that we are in fact alone, and wonders whether that fact gives us the right to inherit everything. He also looks at how we might strive to overcome the limitations of the physical universe and win the deepest future. Stephen Baxter has brought his trademark narrative flair and imaginative brilliance to the latest ideas in physics and cosmology and produced a breathtaking guide to our possible futures.

A Place for Pluto


Stef Wade - 2018
    His planet status was stripped away, leaving him lost and confused. Poor Pluto! On his quest to find a place where he belongs, he talks to comets, asteroids, and meteoroids. He doesn't fit it anywhere! But when Pluto is about to give up, he runs into a dwarf planet and finally finds his place in the solar system. This feel-good picture book combines a popular science topic with character education themes of self discovery, acceptance, and friendship. It has bonus material in the back matter to support curriculum.

ISRO: A Personal History


R. Aravamudan - 2017
    Aravamudan narrates the gripping story of the people who built India s space research programme and how they did it from the rocket engineers who laid the foundation to the savvy young engineers who keep Indian spaceships flying today. It is the tale of an Indian organisation that defied international bans and embargos, worked with laughably meagre resources, evolved its own technology and grew into a major space power. Today, ISRO creates, builds and launches gigantic rockets which carry the complex spacecraft that form the neural network not just of our own country but those of other countries too.This is a made-in-India story like no other.

Who Was Neil Armstrong?


Roberta Edwards - 2008
    Over 80 black-and-white illustrations bring Armstrong?s story to life.

Reaching for the Moon: The Autobiography of NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson


Katherine G. Johnson - 2019
    In school she quickly skipped ahead several grades and was soon studying complex equations with the support of a professor who saw great promise in her. But ability and opportunity did not always go hand in hand. As an African American and a girl growing up in an era of brutal racism and sexism, Katherine faced daily challenges. Still, she lived her life with her father’s words in mind: “You are no better than anyone else, and nobody else is better than you.” In the early 1950s, Katherine was thrilled to join the organization that would become NASA. She worked on many of NASA’s biggest projects including the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first men on the moon. Katherine Johnson’s story was made famous in the bestselling book and Oscar-nominated film Hidden Figures. Now in Reaching for the Moon she tells her own story for the first time, in a lively autobiography that will inspire young readers everywhere.

Forgive Me, I Meant to Do It: False Apology Poems


Gail Carson Levine - 2012
    Matthew Cordell’s clever and playful line art lightheartedly captures the spirit of the poetry. This is the perfect book for anyone who’s ever apologized . . . and not really meant it.

Extreme Cosmos: A Guided Tour of the Fastest, Brightest, Hottest, Heaviest,Oldest, and Most Amazing Aspects of Our Universe


Bryan Gaensler - 2011
    The universe is all about extremes, and in this engaging and thought-provoking book, astronomer Bryan Gaensler gives a whirlwind tour of the galaxies, with an emphasis on its fastest, hottest, heaviest, brightest, oldest, densest, and even loudest elements. From supernova explosions a billion times brighter than the sun to an asteroid the size of a beach ball, Extreme Cosmos offers a fascinating, fresh, and informed perspective of the remarkable richness of the universe, and the incredible physics that modern astronomy has revealed.

Guide to the Night Sky


Storm Dunlop - 2013
    A total eclipse of the Sun will be visible from within a narrow corridor that traverses the United States. The path of the Moon's umbral shadow will begin in the northern Pacific and cross the USA from west to east from Oregon to South Carolina. The Moon's penumbral shadow will produce a partial eclipse visible from most of North America. In fact, the 2017 full eclipse is such an important sky event that sky watchers in Europe are already planning trips to view it. 2017 Guide to the Night Sky provides all of the information needed to view this exciting eclipse and track its path. The time zones and transit of the eclipse will be noted inside the book's jacket for quick and easy reference.The night sky makes for exciting viewing any time of the year, and 2017 Guide to the Night Sky is the ideal guide to help amateur astronomers find their way for the entire 12 months. With monthly charts and other diagrams set for a latitude of 40 degrees North, it shows how the visible stars change from month to month and includes the many sky events that occur throughout the year. It is highly practical for beginning sky gazers because the objects and events may be observed with the naked eye, or nothing more complicated than a pair of binoculars.The month-by-month guides include sky activity charts and moon calendars; meteors (with dates of showers, including hourly rate of radiants); the Planets; ecliptic charts; diagrams of interesting events; plus sky and constellation maps throughout.An appendix includes a full glossary; the Greek Alphabet; the constellation genitives, abbreviations and English names; a table of common asterisms; further information; recommended astronomy journals, societies, institutions and organizations; software, and internet sources.Especially useful for beginning sky watchers, this guide will be fully updated to 2017. Its small and light format makes it the ideal portable reference for backyard astronomers.

The Book of the Moon: A Guide to Our Closest Neighbor


Maggie Aderin-Pocock - 2019
    Maggie Aderin-Pocock. In fact, she earned her nickname “Lunatic” because of her deep fascination for all things lunar. In her lucidly written, comprehensive guide to the moon, Aderin-Pocock takes readers on a journey to our closest celestial neighbor, exploring folklore, facts, and future plans.         She begins with the basics, unpacking everything from the moon’s topography and composition to its formation and orbit around the Earth. She travels back in time to track humanity’s relationship with the moon — beliefs held by ancient civilizations, the technology that allowed for the first moon landing, a brief history of moongazing, and how the moon has influenced culture throughout the years — and then to the future, analyzing the pros and cons of continued space travel and exploration. Throughout the book are sidebars, graphs, and charts to enhance the facts as well as black-and-white illustrations of the moon and stars. The Book of the Moon will be published for the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.

Super Amoeba


Jennifer L. Holm - 2011
    Inspired by his favorite comic book hero, SUPER AMOEBA!, Squish has to navigate school (bullies! detention! Principal Planaria!), family (dad: Hates to wear a tie. Secretly listens to heavy metal in the car), and friends (Peggy-rainbows! happy all the time! and Pod . . . who's . . . well, you just have to meet him). Can Squish save the world—and his friends—from the forces of evil lurking in the hallways? Find out in Squish: Super Amoeba—saving the world, one cell at a time!

How the Meteorite Got to the Museum


Jessie Hartland - 2013
    It came from outer space and crashed onto bookshelves! This third entry in the award-winning Got to the Museum series traces how a rock broke from its billion-year orbit to fall from space onto the trunk of a teenager's car, then to several natural history museums.

The Day the Universe Exploded My Head: Poems to Take You Into Space and Back Again


Allan Wolf - 2019
    My brain was overloaded. It smoked and glowed red-hot. And then it actually exploded.Ever wonder what the sun has to say about being the closest star to Earth? Or what Pluto has gotten up to since being demoted to a dwarf planet? Or where rocket ships go when they retire? Listen closely, because maybe, just maybe, your head will explode, too. With poetry that is equal parts accurate and entertaining -- and illustrations that are positively out of this world -- this book will enthrall amateur stargazers and budding astrophysicists as it reveals many of the wonders our universe holds. Space travelers in search of more information will find notes about the poems, a glossary, and a list of resources at the end.

Helen Keller


George Sullivan - 2002
    Discover Helen's inspirational story with the help of her own writing and speeches.

The Apollo Program: The History and Legacy of America’s Most Famous Space Missions


Charles River Editors - 2015
    Landing on the Moon presented an ideal goal all on its own, but the government’s urgency in designing the Apollo program was actually brought about by the Soviet Union, which spent much of the 1950s leaving the United States in its dust (and rocket fuel). In 1957, at a time when people were concerned about communism and nuclear war, many Americans were dismayed by news that the Soviet Union was successfully launching satellites into orbit. Among those concerned was President Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose space program was clearly lagging a few years behind the Soviets’ space program. From 1959-1963, the United States worked toward putting satellites and humans into orbit via the Mercury program, but Eisenhower’s administration was already designing plans for the Apollo program by 1960, a year before the first Russian orbited the Earth and two years before John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth. On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy addressed Congress and asked the nation to “commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” Given America’s inability to even put a man in orbit yet, this seemed like an overly ambitious goal, and it isn’t even clear that Kennedy himself believed it possible; after all, he was reluctant to meet NASA Administrator James E. Webb’s initial funding requests. As Apollo 11’s name suggests, there were actually a number of Apollo missions that came before, many of which included testing the rockets and different orbital and lunar modules in orbit. In fact, it wasn’t until Apollo 8 that a manned vehicle was sent towards the Moon and back, and before that mission, the most famous Apollo mission was Apollo 1, albeit for all the wrong reasons. Over the decade, NASA would spend tens of billions on the Apollo missions, the most expensive peacetime program in American history to that point, and even though Apollo 11 was only one of almost 20 Apollo missions, it was certainly the crown jewel. only one of nearly 20 Apollo missions conducted by NASA. And to make Apollo 11 a success, it would take nearly a decade of planning by government officials, hard work by NASA scientists, intense training by the astronauts, and several missions preceding Apollo 11. It also cost over $20 billion, making the Apollo program the most expensive peacetime program in American history at the time. Apollo 12 successfully landed astronauts on the Moon just a few months after Apollo 11’s successful mission. Apollo 12 was actually more successful than Apollo 11 from the standpoint of fulfilling the mission objectives, but it was naturally overshadowed since it did not come first. Another reason Apollo 12 is mostly forgotten today can be credited to the dramatic and fateful Apollo 13 mission, which took twists and turns nobody could have predicted when it launched on April 11, 1970. Apollo 13’s mission was to land on the Moon near the Fra Mauro highlands, which were hills that had somehow formed in the middle of a huge crater tens of miles wide. The mission was supposed to test for seismic activity and take samples to analyze the crater and try to find an explanation for the formation of the hills.

I Am Neil Armstrong


Brad Meltzer - 2018
    Each book tells the story of one of America's icons in a lively, conversational way that works well for the youngest nonfiction readers and that always includes the hero's childhood influences. At the back are an excellent timeline and photos. This volume tells the story of Neil Armstrong from his childhood on a farm to a career as an engineer and pilot and how he became the first person on the moon. All of the small steps he took in life--even his failures--led up to his steps on the moon.