Customer Reviews

A Is for Astronaut: Exploring Space from A to Z

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
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2 star:		(1)
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I wanted to buy this book for my 4-year-old daughter, who is very interested in space and astronauts. I picked up a copy at a bookstore and really liked the book at first. The illustrations and detail are terrific. I noticed, though, that all of the people the book profiles are men. All of the astronauts and scientists are men. Neil Armstrong and Yuri Gegarin are profiled, but not Sally Ride, Valentina Tereshkova or Eileen Collins.

All of the photographs of people working on the space program or going into space are men. The only females in the book are women in a crowd of spectators and an illustration of a little girl looking through a telescope on the ground. The message being: girls sit and watch, men do the thinking and hard work.

I'm not a militant feminist. My daughter is not a "tom boy." She happily plays princess and enjoys her Hello Kitty coloring books just as much as she likes watching videos of the Mars lander. I just think that a modern book should reflect more modern ways of thinking.

This book won't be coming on to our bookshelves. We look forward to a later edition that pays more attention to men AND women who have dedicated their lives to space exploration.

As an adult, I generally don't like kids' picturebooks. They're big, expensive, hardbacks with almost no pages, almost no reading and a lot of pictures. Kids are wild about them for the same reason. I notice one of the "official" reviews slams this book for the thinly veiled worst reason: it's not educational enough. This book only has about one sentence for each letter of the alphabet, but forget that. It's visually dazzling.

It's not about learning the alphabet (Richard Scarry's books are better for that). It's also not about learning little definitions of complex tech things (DK robot and other books are better for that). What it is about is firing the imagination with wonderful sounding words married to amazing pictures. This book does what President Kennedy in the early '60s hoped to do when he tried to excite American youth to explore science and math, and bring America into the space program.

What does excite youth? Star Wars, Transformers, Lost in Space, Star Trek, E.T., The Jetsons. In short, imaginative portrayls that broaden the mind and feed kids' natural curiosity. What doesn't excite kids? Little models of the Challenger, which fall so short of The Jetsons, dull, "educational" science kits which leave off everything fun and appeal to no one except possibly "official" adult reviewers. A is for Astronaut manages to somehow keep the kick in Cape Kennedy (or Cape Canaveral) while opening young minds to the dazzling wonders of creation. I dare say any space- minded kid will find it amazing.

I purchased this book last year for my 5 year old. It is cuter and nicer then I thought it would be. It has great pictures and lots of fun information and facts. I think this book is appropriate for children 4-8 years old. Great book!

I plan on living vicariously through my child, who will certainly grow up to be an astronaut... because I always wanted to! She's only 15 months old, so she doesn't read this book yet, but I am in love with it. Bright illustrations and photos, laid out kind of like an alphabetical, abbreviated, fun encyclopedia! This is really charming, and hopefully it will someday inspire my daughter and I to investigate some of the space related objects listed in greater detail together. This book is probably more inspirational than educational, but a real pleasure to thumb through!

This book is a good learning tool for future astronauts. It teaches the alphabet as well as important space terms. We read it quite often.Child is 3.