Endurance, Young Readers Edition: My Year in Space and How I Got There

by Scott Kelly

Overview

Discover what it's like to spend a year in space in this awe-inspiring memoir from a real-life NASA astronaut who did just that!

Prepare to blast off with astronaut Scott Kelly as he takes readers on a journey through his year aboard the International Space Station and his life prior to becoming a true American hero.

Discover the extreme challenges of long-term spaceflight, the pressures of living in close quarters with people from many countries, the extremely dangerous risk of colliding with space junk and the unnerving feeling of not being able to help if tragedy strikes at home. Kelly's struggles in school and how he overcame them after a book sparked his dream to become a test pilot and astronaut prove it's never too late to find your path.

This personal and fascinating story, newly adapted for young readers from the New York Times bestseller, will encourage aspiring astronauts of all ages to believe in the impossible and reach for the stars.

"An engaging and high-flying read for nonfiction and space lovers alike." —School Library Journal

"Those who are intrigued by space travel will find this a fascinating book." —Booklist

"Recommend this to readers who are interested in current events and anyone who wants an in-depth look at a STEM-related career." —VOYA

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781524764272
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	02/11/2020
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	342,817
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 7.60(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

SCOTT KELLY is a former U.S. Navy fighter pilot, test pilot, and NASA astronaut. Kelly retired from the Navy at the rank of captain after twenty-five years of service. A veteran of four spaceflights, Kelly commanded the space shuttle Endeavour in 2007 and twice commanded the International Space Station. He has spent more than 520 days in space and holds the record for the longest single mission by a U.S. astronaut. He lives in Houston. You can follow him on Facebook, on Instagram, and on Twitter at @StationCDRKelly.

Read an Excerpt

My earliest memories are of the warm summer nights when my mother, Patricia, tried to settle Mark and me to sleep in our house on Mitchell Street in West Orange, New Jersey. It was still light outside, and I could hear the sounds of the neighborhood drifting in through the open windows—older kids yelling, the thumps of basketballs against driveways, the rustling of breezes high in the trees, the faraway sounds of traffic. I remember the feeling of drifting weightless between summer and sleep.
 
My brother and I were born in 1964. Members of my father’s side of our family lived all up and down our block, aunts and uncles and cousins in both directions. The town was separated by a hill. The more well-off lived “up the hill,” and we lived “down the hill.” I remember waking early in the morning with my brother when we were small, maybe two years old. My parents were sleeping, so we were on our own. We got bored, figured out how to open the back door, and left the house to explore, two toddlers wandering the neighborhood. We made our way to a gas station, where we played in the grease until the owner found us. He knew where we lived and stuck us back in the house without waking my parents. When my mother finally got up and came downstairs, she was confused by the grease all over us. Later that day, the owner came over and told her what had happened.
 
One afternoon when we were in kindergarten, my mother told us she had an important task for us. She held a white envelope in front of her as if it were a special prize. Mom told us to put the letter in a mailbox directly across the street from our house. But first, she warned us that it wasn’t safe to cross in the middle of the street—we could be hit by a car. So we were to walk up to the corner and cross the street there, then walk back to the mailbox on the other side of the street and mail the letter. When our job was done, we needed to take the long way home, walking to the corner to cross again. We promised to follow her instructions.
 
Mark and I set off and walked up to the corner. We looked both ways, crossed, and made our way to the mailbox. Mark boosted me up to pull down the heavy blue handle, and I proudly deposited the letter in the slot. With our job complete, it was time to head back home.
 
“I’m not walking all the way back to the corner,” Mark announced. “I’m just going to cross the street right here.”
 
“Mom said we should cross at the corner,” I reminded him. “You’re going to get hit by a car.”
 
But Mark had made up his mind.
 
I set off back toward the corner myself, eager to get home and be praised for having followed directions. I reached the corner, crossed, and turned back toward the house. The next thing I heard was car brakes squealing and the thump of a collision. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something the size and shape of a kid flying up into the air.
 
Mark sat, dazed, in the middle of the street, while the frantic driver fussed over him. Someone ran for our mother, an ambulance came, and Mark was whisked away to the hospital. I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening with my uncle Joe and his family. I was left at home to worry about my rule-breaking brother, as I was steaming over the unfairness of having to stay home and eat liver for dinner with our uncle while waiting for news about my wounded twin. Mark had a concussion and had a short hospital stay and got lots of attention, while I felt like I got the worse end of the deal.
 
This was only one of Mark’s many hospital stays during our childhood. Mark broke his arm sliding down a handrail. Mark had appendicitis. Mark stepped on a broken glass bottle of worms and got blood poisoning. Mark was taken into the city for a series of tests to see whether he had bone cancer (he didn’t). We both played with BB guns recklessly, but only Mark got shot in the foot and then damaged by a botched surgery.
 
As our childhoods went on, we continued to take crazy risks. We both got hurt. We both got stitches so often we sometimes would have the doctors remove the stitches from the previous injury during the same visit new stitches were put in. But only Mark had to stay overnight at the hospital. I was always jealous of the extra attention this got him.
 
When we were about five, my parents bought a little vacation bungalow on the Jersey Shore, and some of my best memories from childhood are from that time.
 
At the shore, in the mornings, Mark and I had a kind of freedom my own children never had. We’d spend all day on the dock behind our bungalow, waiting to feel a crab nibble on the bait. We built rafts out of spare fence planks and set sail on Barnegat Bay. I remember falling off a dock before I knew how to swim and sinking into the dark and murky water of the lagoon. I didn’t know what to do about it. I simply watched the bubbles of the last of my air rising. Then my father, who had seen my blond hair drifting just above the water, grabbed a handful and pulled me out.
 
When Mark and I were in second grade, our parents sold the place on the Jersey Shore so they could buy a house “up the hill.” They wanted us to be able to go to a better public school. We moved onto a street lined with giant green oak trees, aptly named Greenwood Avenue. It’s odd that once we moved, we hardly ever saw our family on Mitchell Street again. Except for his parents, my father was often not on speaking terms with various friends and family members.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Endurance:

"Captivating, charming . . . [Kelly] pulls back the curtain separating the myth of the astronaut from its human realities." -- The New York Times Book Review

"[Endurance] is a memoir of the right stuff that will hypnotize any space geek." —The Wall Street Journal

"Endurance, with its honest, gritty descriptions of an unimaginable life, a year off Earth, is as close as most readers will come to making that voyage themselves.” —The Financial Times

“Kelly’s account is insightful, at times humorous, heart-tugging at others. And it’s inspiring enough to change the life of some lost kid, just like The Right Stuff did for him.” —USA Today

“For space junkies, it’s absolutely required reading. . . . We feel as though we’re right there with him. A great book.” —Booklist

“This isn’t your usual astronaut’s memoir.” —The Philadelphia Tribune


Praise for My Journey to the Stars:

"Kelly’s account firmly underscores the rewards of dedication to one’s dreams." —Publishers Weekly

"Kelly’s story is an inspiration for adventure, fodder for space fascination, and a call to work hard and follow one’s dreams." —Booklist

"[Will] inspire a new generation of space ­travelers." —School Library Journal

From the Publisher

09/01/2018
Gr 6 Up—Kelly spent a year in space onboard the International Space Station (ISS), but that is just one of his incredible achievements. Kelly and his twin brother Mark are both celebrated space travelers, but they did not journey the same path, and Kelly does a wonderful job of detailing his rockier start. Good grades and success seemed far away when he first picked up a copy of Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff; Kelly was failing his premed classes and was directionless when he read Wolfe's account of the hardships early astronauts endured. The narrative details heartaches, tragedies, close calls, and his time onboard ISS. Kelly's story is relatable and the plot mostly focuses on showing young people the amount of hard work he had to do to achieve his dream, while simultaneously making sure readers understand that it's never too late to start a new path. Photos are included throughout. VERDICT An engaging and high-flying read for nonfiction and space lovers alike. A fine addition to large nonfiction collections.—Traci Glass, Multnomah County Library, OR

School Library Journal

2018-06-25
Kelly recalls piloting space shuttles and living aboard the International Space Station.Pared down from the 2017 version for adults, stripped of its profanity, and rearranged into a linear narrative, this memoir still manages to be slow off the launch pad, woodenly conventional (if infused with deadpan humor), and anticlimactic at the close. Kelly begins with his very earliest memories and traces his youth from an epiphanic encounter with Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff ("I closed the book that night a different person") to military-style nautical training ("a different person") and graduation from New York's Maritime College ("a completely different person"). Experiences as a U.S. Navy test pilot led to astronaut training, two shuttle flights, and two ISS gigs. In an apparent bid for attention from young readers he comes off throughout as positively obsessed with space toilets and the diapers American astronauts wear when bathroom trips are not an option. Of (perhaps) greater interest are his memories of working and living with colleagues from Russia and other countries after the space shuttle program ended. These are enlivened by comments about space food ("The Russians also have something called ‘the Appetizing Appetizer,' which it is not") and other details seldom if ever found in other astronaut biographies. He closes with a tally of general-issue life lessons. Finished photos and backmatter not seen.Occasionally amusing, rarely fresh, this expands the author's picture-book account, My Journey to the Stars (illustrated by André Ceolin, 2017), without adding much significant. (Memoir. 10-16)

Kirkus Reviews