A is for Astronaut: Blasting Through the Alphabet by Clayton
Anderson, illustrated by Scott Brundage.
NON-FICTION/PICTURE BOOK Sleeping Bear Press, 2018. $17. 9781585363964
BUYING ADVISORY: EL (K-3-), EL – OPTIONAL
AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE
Each letter of the alphabet explains a
different element of space travel. Some
of the letters explain parts of the space shuttles or the outfits and other
letters explain terms used (such as Zulu).
There is a 4-6 line poem that includes the space term as well as a hefty
3-4 paragraph informational side bar for every letter.
I tried to read this book with my 8 year old
and he asked me to stop reading after the second letter. The illustrations are amazing and grab your
attention, but the amount of informational text is overwhelming and the
vocabulary to hard for younger readers to understand. I thought I would just read the poems to my
son, but he even got bored with that.
Maybe a real space lover could enjoy this book, but your average reader
is going to be turned off by the amount of text and an older reader is going to
feel like the picture book is too babyish. That said the informational text was super interesting and I, as an adult, enjoyed it.
C. Peterson
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment