Readers of either edition will be in for a grand, inspiring, sometimes hilarious ride.
A 2016 memoir from the first astronaut to tweet from space, lightly tweaked for younger readers.
Along with some reworking of the prose, Massimino drops chapters on his father’s death and his schooling in NASA fundraising and media relations. As a result, though this edition isn’t significantly shorter or easier to read than the original, his valorization of teamwork, maintaining a positive attitude, and overcoming past struggles and reverses through determination play out less in his private life than in his roller-coaster ride through school, astronaut training, and two missions into space. Fortunately, he also paints vivid word pictures, whether capturing the heady experience of playing with an Astronaut Snoopy as a child (“I still have him, only now he’s been to space for real”) or, memorably, the removal of what he repeatedly describes as “111 very tiny screws” from a failed device on the Hubble Space Telescope. Readers will feel his profound shock, but also relief, upon learning (in a segment pointedly titled “Russian Roulette”) that the shuttle Columbia had come apart upon reentry on the mission just after his. Yes, he writes, it’s very nearly impossible to become an astronaut, but: “I wanted to grow up to be Spider-Man—and I did.” Photo illustrations not seen.
Readers of either edition will be in for a grand, inspiring, sometimes hilarious ride. (Autobiography. 11-13)Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-12086-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
Logically pointing out that the American cowboy archetype didn’t spring up from nowhere, Sandler, author of Cowboys (1994) and other volumes in the superficial, if luxuriously illustrated, “Library of Congress Book” series, looks back over 400 years of cattle tending in North America. His coverage ranges from the livestock carried on Columbus’s second voyage to today’s herding-by-helicopter operations. Here, too, the generous array of dramatic early prints, paintings, and photos are more likely to capture readers’ imaginations than the generality-ridden text. But among his vague comments about the characters, values, and culture passed by Mexican vaqueros to later arrivals from the Eastern US, Sadler intersperses nods to the gauchos, llaneros, and other South American “cowmen,” plus the paniolos of Hawaii, and the renowned African-American cowboys. He also decries the role film and popular literature have played in suppressing the vaqueros’ place in the history of the American West. He tackles an uncommon topic, and will broaden the historical perspective of many young cowboy fans, but his glance at modern vaqueros seems to stop at this country’s borders. Young readers will get a far more detailed, vivid picture of vaquero life and work from the cowboy classics in his annotated bibliography. (Notes, glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2001
ISBN: 0-8050-6019-7
Page Count: 116
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2000
The life of Manjiro Nakahama, also known as John Mung, makes an amazing story: shipwrecked as a young fisherman for months on a remote island, rescued by an American whaler, he became the first Japanese resident of the US. Then, after further adventures at sea and in the California gold fields, he returned to Japan where his first-hand knowledge of America and its people earned him a central role in the modernization of his country after its centuries of peaceful isolation had ended. Expanding a passage from her Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun (1985, Newbery Honor), Blumberg not only delivers an absorbing tale of severe hardships and startling accomplishments, but also takes side excursions to give readers vivid pictures of life in mid-19th-century Japan, aboard a whaler, and amidst the California Gold Rush. The illustrations, a generous mix of contemporary photos and prints with Manjiro’s own simple, expressive drawings interspersed, are at least as revealing. Seeing a photo of Commodore Perry side by side with a Japanese artist’s painted portrait, or strange renditions of a New England town and a steam train, based solely on Manjiro’s verbal descriptions, not only captures the unique flavor of Japanese art, but points up just how high were the self-imposed barriers that separated Japan from the rest of the world. Once again, Blumberg shows her ability to combine high adventure with vivid historical detail to open a window onto the past. (source note) (Biography. 10-13)
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2001
ISBN: 0-688-17484-1
Page Count: 80
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
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