A is for Astronaut: Blasting Through the Alphabet

Kids love things about space. Many dream of being astronauts. So what better subject for an alphabet book than this, and who better to write it than a real astronaut who spent several months on the International Space Station? While younger readers and listeners will love this book, the way it is structured will draw in middle-grade readers. Sleeping Bear Press has a number of alphabet books that are designed to reach this wider audience. This one has a short verse for each of the letters of the alphabet that will please younger readers, but each also has a longer prose piece giving much more in-depth information about the particular topic. This is a great way to introduce terms to little ones while satisfying older readers’ thirst for deeper understanding. Author Clayton Anderson does a good job choosing the topics. His prose writing is certainly stronger than his verse, but he makes both fun and interesting, and he gets a surprising amount of historical and technical information in the short prose sections — each two or three paragraphs long. Illustrations by Scott Brundage are fun yet still have great details in them, the perfect complement to the text.