The U.S. Space Camp Book of Rockets

Follows a group of Space Camp trainees through the world-famous Rocket Park and Space Museum

Grade 3-5-A "gee-whiz" look at America's space program, organized around the rockets used at each stage of its development, from World War II to the present. In what ends up being more of an introduction to the Rocket Park and Space Museum in Huntsville, Alabama, than an overview of rocketry, Baird briefly presents the historical origins of the technology, beginning with the German V-2. Good-quality, full-color photographs of the different models illustrate the text. Unfortunately, readers will learn little about the actual design and functioning of rockets. Most of the description is of how they were used; there's not a diagram or schematic drawing of an engine to be found. Engine function is compared to letting the air out of a balloon. ("Newton's third law of motion," cry the happy space campers through whose eyes readers tour the park). A few numbers (height, weight, payload capability, or engine diameter) are mentioned in varying combinations. A glitzy but superficial volume.
Elaine Fort Weischedel, Turner Free Library, Randolph, MA
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 4-6. It's difficult not to feel excited and patriotic poring over these pages chronicling America's race to conquer space. What seems to have been humankind's dream since early times is dramatically captured here in story and photographs showing both triumphs and failures. A group of Space Camp trainees tours the Rocket and Space Museum in Huntsville, Alabama, where the story begins. From Jules Verne's science-fiction vision of space travel to the model of Freedom, a proposed space station that will be staffed by astronauts from around the world, space campers and readers witness a jubilant past and a promising future. The color photographs are super and help propel an account that will appeal to anyone who has imagined what it might be like to go where no one has gone before. Denia Hester