Friendship 7: First American in Orbit (Countdown to Space)

Describes the launch of Friendship 7 and John Glenn, the first American astronaut in orbit

Gr 4-6-Cole commemorates three milestones in the history of space exploration. He enriches accounts available in general histories and encyclopedias with well-chosen details-the political reasons for including civilian engineer Gregory Jarvis in the crew of the Challenger; the fact that John Glenn's spacecraft was named by his children; and just what Yuri Gagarin, the first human to view Earth from space, saw from the window of Vostok 1. The author describes technical problems clearly, and turns each mission into a tense tale of danger, courage, and obstacles overcome-or, in Challenger's case, deliberately ignored. The information is backed up by endnotes, supplemented by plenty of small photos (many in color), and includes biographies of the people involved-though Glenn's subsequent career is not mentioned. Gregory Kennedy's First Men in Space (Chelsea, 1991) and books such as James McCarter's The Space Shuttle Disaster (Bookwright, 1988) cover most of the same territory, but Cole's fresh treatments offer an appealing blend of specific information and easy writing. John Peters, New York Public Library

Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information, Inc.