Review of the Day: Astronaut Handbook by Meghan McCarthy

Back up! Back up swiftly now, because I don’t know how much longer I can hold her in. She’s coming out, I can feel it. Yes… YES… It’s the return of Curmudgeonly Old Lady and there’s nothing I can do to stop her tirades! Flee for your very life!

Why when I was a mere wisp of a girl of four or five do you know whom every girl my age wanted to be? No, not Mary Lou Retton (though that would be a strong guess). It was Sally Ride. Every child my age knew exactly who Sally Ride was. First American woman in space? How awesome was that? And because I’m talking about the height of Sally Ride fever, we kids spent a lot of time thinking about outer space and what it would be like to travel to the moon. The moon landing was a mere fourteen years before and the Challenger tragedy would happen when I was eight. Basically, space stuff was in the news and incredibly important. Now look at these young `uns today. Do they have the same space fervor of my generation? We’re almost prepped to go to Mars, but do they care? Well, probably a lot of them do. But where are the books out there meant to feed their fever? The titles that make traveling in space sound fun and interesting? And not the older stuff for the ten-year-olds either. I’m talking picture book non-fiction titles for five-year-olds that make outer space out to be really cool. Well, there’s probably one or two titles out there already in existence, but I doubt that many of them are as enjoyable and visually arresting as author/illustrator Meghan McCarthy’s latest. A specialist in the realm of the fun informational picture book, Ms. McCarthy presents the reader with four kids bent on becoming astronauts. If ever there was a space-related whistle whetter, this would be it.

Fact meets the ultimate childhood fantasy as Meghan McCarthy tells you just exactly how to go about becoming an astronaut in this day and age. After determining what kind of astronaut it is that you would like to be (would you prefer to fly the shuttle, perform scientific experiments, or do repairs?) it all comes down to studying hard in school and doing well. Being an astronaut means keeping fit, getting along with others, and then the real work begins. McCarthy covers everything from the Vomit Comet and food in outer space to astronaut’s toilets, the mechanics of a space suit, and liftoff itself in simple words and phrases. Young kids will get a big kick out of this child-based tutorial on what it takes to reach the stars.

Ms. McCarthy’s thick paints are the joy of her books. Here is a lady unafraid to slap down some serious looking brushstrokes. The design of these pages is broken up in a variety of different ways, sometimes in small separate pics on a white page, sometimes in vertical views of liftoff that require you to turn the book. Some professional reviewers have been getting a bit confused as to whether the people in this book are kids or adults. It’s a pretty easy thing to determine, though. McCarthy’s kids have round faces and short little bodies. Her adults are elongated in comparison (a fact evident when paging through the section on the different kinds of astronauts). That brings up the question of why kids would be traveling to outer space, but the whole point of the book is that it’s a kind of child wish fulfillment. Understand that and you won’t find it confusing in the least.

Informational books for young children often begin with Gail Gibbons and end with Byron Barton with very little wiggle room in between. Now I Want to Be an Astronaut has a more sophisticated and enticing companion for those star struck children just itching to travel up up and away. Astronaut Handbook offers the facts you want in the format you need and is a heckuva lot of fun along the way. If I’ve ever harbored any fears that kids today don’t have adequate books to feed their love of space, those fears can now be put to rest. A must have purchase for any library system.