Review by Booklist Review
Plucky underdog Pluto was the target of spaceship New Horizons, which launched in 2006 and flew by the planet in 2015. Lapin's exciting, accessible STEM offering relates the pioneering journey in a two-part text. In the narrative portion, the odyssey is told by anthropomorphizing the ship ("[New Horizons] was a brave name, the spacecraft thought"), while accompanying sidebars provide nonfiction discussions of Pluto and its environs, the solar system generally, and the scientific side of the mission. Ceccarelli's clear, colorful images are helpfully labeled, and the spacecraft herself is depicted realistically, except for the drawn-on facial expressions and cartoonish arms. Though sometimes the art is more decorative than informative, the twilight space backgrounds and entertainingly animated spacecraft are quite engaging. Pluto's demotion to a dwarf planet is mentioned, as well as disagreements among the scientific community about its status--a valuable lesson for science classrooms. Helpful back matter includes a detailed time line of the voyage, a robust glossary, and a list of websites where students can see videos of the spacecraft. Playful science for space-loving kids.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
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) Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
