Kids to Space: A Space Traveler's Guide [Paperback]

Lonnie Jones Schorer (Author), Buzz Aldrin (Foreword)

Book Description

Age Level: 8 and up | Grade Level: 3 and up

The why's and how's of space travel are demystified in this kid-friendly reference guide that encourages children to ponder humankind's future in space. The questions, generated by students in kindergarten through high school, address issues—ranging from animals, asteroids, black holes, space exploration, and sleeping in zero gravity—that are divided into 85 distinct subject categories. Easy-to-understand explanations to queries such as What does space smell like? are provided by internationally recognized experts that include NASA engineers, former astronauts, astronomy professors, and aerospace instructors. Illustrations appear both in the book and on an accompanying CD-ROM, making this a useful classroom activity guide or tool for child–parent discovery.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 5-9–Offspring of a large-scale project that linked North American students, ages 3 to 19, with well-known space experts, this title intersperses hundreds of drawings by children and young adults–most, but not all, reproduced in black and white–with thousands of questions and answers in 94 space-related categories, from Distances and Black Holes to Administrative Logistics and Sovereignty. The youngsters were asked what they would like to know before planning a trip to the Moon or to an orbiting hotel; their queries, and the answers, range from super basic (How do spaceships stay up in space?) to relatively abstruse (What is delta V?), with an admixture of practical concerns (Yes, you need a license to command a spaceship) and wider issues, such as Is space travel and exploration worth the time and money? Drably printed in double columns of tiny type, this massive Q & A is better suited for browsing or brief read-aloud sessions than for assignment use, but it provides plenty of support for efforts to boost interest in space travel. Packaged with even more children's art on a CD-ROM.–John Peters, New York Public Library
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Lonnie Jones Schorer is a director of Global Space Travelers and a member of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery and Women in Aerospace. She lives in Burke, Virginia. Buzz Aldrin is a former Apollo 11 astronaut. He lives in Laguna Beach, California.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 8 and up
  
• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Collector's Guide Publishing, Inc. (May 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1894959426
• ISBN-13: 978-1894959421
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,678,196 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For the Starchild in all of us, July 13, 2006

By 

Lunar Librarian "Ken" (TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kids to Space: A Space Traveler's Guide (Paperback)

Full Disclosure: This reviewer also helped to write the book. I was asked to help Tom Matula with the Moon section. I receive no remuneration for either my contribution to the book or this review, other than an author's copy from the editor.

Published in 2006 by Apogee Books, it weighs in at 303 pages plus CD-ROM with all images and slideshow feature with music by Hawkwind and weblinks. A few minor factual errors, but nothing significant given the sheer volume of material. One is the footnote on the table for the question 'What is the Moon made of?'. It's actually from "The Pocket Guide to Lunar Mineralogy: How Moon Rocks and Earth Rocks are Related".

Hot off the presses, this amazing book was created by engaging thousands of schoolchildren in the U.S. and Canada to submit some 18,000 questions and thousands of drawings. These were then culled for duplicates and unintelligible questions, and the remaining 1,827 questions were then farmed out to scores of people engaged in humanity's space efforts. With 101 chapters, including introductions and indexes, the questions clearly ranged across a wide variety of topics.

The book sorts them into three general categories: Planning to go to Space, Visiting and Living in Space, and Exploring Space. Really it should be regarded as a comprehensively well written and illustrated space almanac for kids. Everything you could possibly want to know about traveling into space is covered, from hair & nails to ultraviolet rays. Woven throughout the chapters is a story of several youngsters preparing themselves for just such a trip.

What an absolutely beautiful and well-written book. It takes a while to read through, and I have to admit I learned a couple of things from the effort. What's intriguing is the sorts of things that kids had questions about. Ranked in order these were:

The Moon (114)
Spacecraft (97)
Health & Medical (60)
Planets (47)
Emergencies (45)
Space (44)
Communities (37)
Asteroids, Comets & Meteors (35)
Clothing (34)
Weightlessness (31)
Galaxy, Solar System & Universe (31)

That's a pretty telling list, and says a great deal about what this next generation's thoughts are about space. They want to go to the Moon, in space craft, while taking good care of themselves, and being cautious of emergencies as they explore the planets and asteroids and live in space in really hip clothes.

The pool of experts put together is quite humbling, eighty-three total. Buzz Aldrin is there, as is Eric Anderson (Space Adventures), Robert Bigelow (Bigelow Aerospace), Sir Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic), Sir Arthur Clarke (Dean of Space), Brad Edwards (carbon nanotubes), David Gump (t/Space), Loretta Hidalgo (Yuri's Night), Carolyn Porco (Cassini PI), Burt Rutan (Scaled Composites), Dennis Tito (ISS tourist), Neil DeGrasse-Tyson (Hayden Planetarium NYC), and George Whitesides (National Space Society), as well as 15 astronauts to give some first-hand background.

The real success of this work lies in the participation of the 6,000 or so school kids from 83 U.S. and 1 Canadian school, as well as from 17 schools that submitted questions for the `Going to Space with Disabilities' chapter. (Quick, can anyone name all -7- senses?)

I think I was most impressed with the chapter on Health & Medicine. USAF Col. Dr. Richard S. Williams did an outstanding job of covering the topic in a no-nonsense fashion that really answered each question well. Other good sections were Dennis Tito's "Expectations" and Robert Bigelow's "Space Hotels". Trygve Magelssen did a really good job with "Resources", and the "Sports" questions were neat, and U.S. Space & Rocket Center did a great job answering them. Paintball on the Moon!

The book is lavishly illustrated with drawings done by the youngsters, one for each chapter. Some real concerns are expressed, and it's not just a happy-feely love-fest of pictures. Edvard Munch's "The Scream" is referenced in the drawing on the back cover. One young lady asserts that "Although we can expand and live in space it DOESN'T mean we should." There are also 40 full-color glossy pictures in the middle. Some of the pictures display an excellent amount of care in their preparation (like the young lady's from Nevada which opens the section on "Visiting & Living in Space"), and an awful lot of creativity. Interestingly, most of the space stations pictured were of the big rotating ring or ring/cylinder combination.

Everyone should immediately order one of these for their local school. Then another for the family. This kind of resource is the kind of rare treasure that doesn't come around very often.

It's very difficult for me to divorce myself from my pride of ownership (with Tom Matula) of the Moon chapter for a rating attempt. Attempting to ignore that particularly excellent chapter, I do have to look at the fact that there were a handful of factual errors, and some of the answers seemed to reflect more what the expert wanted to say as opposed to answering the question asked. These limitations really are few, because five errors in the answers to 1,800 questions is really an excellent record.

What has to be looked at is the context of what has been achieved by this project, which is a book that is probably going to be the definitive children's space reference for a while. I highly recommend the hardbound copy that I picked up, if only for some measure of durability.

6,000 kids, 1,800 questions, 1,000 illustrations, 101 schools, 101 chapters, 83 experts, and one heck of an editor.

It gets a Full Moon rating.

From an online review by Ken Murphy, an alumnus of International Space University, and co-chair of the 2007 NSS International Space Development Conference. His Moon book reviews, and this review with weblinks, can be found at outofthecradle.net

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an aspiration elevator, July 28, 2006

By 

Howard Bloom (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kids to Space: A Space Traveler's Guide (Paperback)

Lonnie Jones Schorer has written a book with a mission. A critical mission. Turning the next generation of kids--your kids and mine--into space-farers. Inspiring our kids to dream of vacationing in orbit, of kicking up dust on the moon, of living in places life has never gone, and of being the Johnny Appleseeds of the solar system. Schorer has written a book to turn today's kids into the generation that realizes Star Trek's dreams.

Moving into space is as vital as reducing carbon emissions. Our planet is so fragile that it has experienced 146 mass extinctions--all without smokestack industries and human beings. So taking life to as many nooks and crannies of the cosmos as we can is crucial to the survival of the plants, animals, and even the bacteria who are our cousins in the family of DNA.

Schorer has given kids a personal stake in the big jump to space. She's asked 6,000 students in the US and Canada to imagine planning a trip to the moon or to a space hotel, then to think of the questions whose answers they'd want before they packed their bags and prepared for the big trek, the adventure of their lives.

The students posed a total of 18,000 questions, questions Schorer took to 80 experts, some of the top experts in their field. The contributors she snagged for Kids to Space include Richard Branson, Arthur C. Clark, Buzz Aldrin, Robert Bigelow (who launched the first inflatable hotel prototype into orbit July 14, 2006), Burt Rutan (who won the X-Prize in October, 2004, for designing, building, and launching the first privately-financed human-piloted rocket into suborbital space, landing it safely, then launching and landing it a second time in a single week), Neil deGrasse Tyson (Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City), Norman Mineta (a Democrat who served as Secretary of Transportation for President George W. Bush), and Esther Dyson (one of the world's leading emerging-technology experts).

Then Schorer tied her questions and answers together with a storyline that you can read to your kids when they're young ...and with in-depth information you and your kids can dive into as your children grow older and more curious.

Want your kids to have high aspirations, some of the highest ever dreamed by humankind? Kids to Space: A Space Traveler's Guide is the book to fire space-fever in their minds.

Howard Bloom--author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and of Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From the Big Bang to the 21st Century

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Innovative approach to content makes this a clear winner, July 16, 2006

By 

Luke Keller (Etna, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Kids to Space: A Space Traveler's Guide (Paperback)

I have developed space science materials for children and I have reviewed such work by other scientists. What sets 'Kids to Space' apart from those fine efforts is the simple fact that the students, not the educators, set the agenda: kids wrote and illustrated the questions with the curiosity and imagination that comes so naturally to young people. It was fun and often very challenging to respond to those questions because they got quickly and simply to the fundamentals of many areas of the science and technology of space and space travel. 'Kids to Space' and its innovative approach are a fabulous and remarkably thorough resource for teachers, students, and anyone interested in outer space and the issues and intricacies surrounding its exploration.