The Little Spacecraft That Could

by Joyce Lapin, Simona Ceccarelli (Illustrator)

Overview

Ride along with the New Horizons spacecraft as she rockets three billion miles to Pluto! Watch her take the first close-up photos of Pluto, and then journey another billion miles to mini-world Arrokoth. You’ll whiz through space at more than 10 miles per second; learn how giant planet Jupiter helped the little spacecraft reach Pluto; and discover the astonishing surface feature that made the world fall in love with Pluto.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781454937555
Publisher:	Union Square Kids
Publication date:	05/18/2021
Pages:	40
Sales rank:	1,057,591
Product dimensions:	8.70(w) x 10.90(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	950L (what's this?)
Age Range:	7 - 18 Years

About the Author

Joyce Lapin has enjoyed reading and learning about astronomy since childhood. A former advertising copywriter, she's happy to have found a kinder, gentler life writing books. She is the author of Sterling’s If You Had Your Birthday Party on the Moon. She lives in Simsbury, CT.

Editorial Reviews

A 2024 Texas Topaz Nonfiction Reading List Selection (Grades 3-5)

"An epic, energetic flight into the dimmer reaches of our local astronomical neighborhood."—Kirkus (starred review)

“[In] Lapin’s exciting, accessible STEM offering . . . [with] Ceccarelli’s clear, colorful images . . . the twilight space backgrounds and entertainingly animated spacecraft are quite engaging. . . . Playful science for space-loving kids.”—Booklist

From the Publisher

★ 2021-02-09
The creators of If You Had Your Birthday Party on the Moon (2019) chronicle a far more venturesome outing.

Bursting up from Earth, wrapped in gold foil (real) and a huge grin (fictive), the New Horizons probe sets out for distant Pluto to answer questions ranging from “What color [is] its sky?” to “[Are] there gross creepy-crawly things?” Along her weary way, she learns that Pluto gets downgraded to a dwarf planet (“Well, this stung a bit”), but after getting a gravity assist from “ginormous” Jupiter and falling into a long, long semisleep, the probe at last wakes up, focuses her cameras, and “on July 14, 2015, Pluto suddenly became a place.” A place, Lapin notes in her generous payload of scientific observations and findings, with not one but five moons, a huge heart-shaped glacier of frozen nitrogen, and just maybe an un-frozen subsurface ocean suitable for harboring life. But Pluto is only the beginning for the plucky probe, as she has continued on her multibillion-mile course past the strangely shaped Kuiper belt object Arrokoth (sky in the Powhatan tongue) in 2019 and is still barreling along her astronomical track to worlds beyond. (Stay tuned for further developments.) Small inset photos and graphics add helpful views of orbits, several more dwarf planets, and other details. With just one exception, all the Earthbound scientists following the expedition present White. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11-by-17-inch double-page spreads viewed at 75% of actual size.)

An epic, energetic flight into the dimmer reaches of our local astronomical neighborhood. (timeline, glossary, bibliography, websites) (Informational picture book. 6-8)

Kirkus Reviews