50 Animals That Have Been to Space

Beginner's Guide to Space

by Jennifer L Read, John A. Read (With)

Since the early days of flight, animals have helped researchers learn how to survive in the sky, and their role continues as humanity voyages into outer space. In 1783, a rooster, a duck, and a sheep were placed in a basket attached to the first hot-air balloon. In the age of rockets and space travel, many more animals have traveled into orbit, and most have returned safely to earth.

This book tells the stories of 50 trips into space, and the animals and the scientists involved. An appealing introduction to space exploration, this book encourages young readers to engage in real science.

Genres: Nonfiction

88 pages, Hardcover

Published August 1, 2020

Reviews

[Ellon]

That was wild! I learned so much about animals in space that I didn't know. Although it does make me feel a bit torn. Like I get how experimenting on animals help us learn things that will improve the lives of humans but many of these experiments are straight up inhumane (this is addressed in the intro). When reading the beginning tales, it made me wonder why any human signed up for space missions! I loved learning more about the student projects towards the end.
This would be a great book for kids interested in space. It even made me want to research more about some of the things mentioned.

The book had these cool features where it had icons for videos about the experiment being available on YouTube and Research Papers that were available. My only complaint with this is that I wish they had a website that housed the links. In the end, it gave the title of the research papers and said you could just type the title in your browser's search bar but I wonder about the YouTube videos. I think it would be hard to find the exact video that the authors are referring to in the text.
I also noticed a few mistakes in the text that should have been picked up on in editing, like a missing word. On page 20 there is a asterisk after the sentence about spaceflight not causing in fertility but there is no explanation of what the asterisk refers to (it bothered me).
So all in all, an interesting book that could have been amazing with a few edits.

P.S. I loved how the Soviets and Americans were so precise in picking their animals and the French were like "yo, grab some stray cats!"

[Nessa]

This book is amazing! It's really interesting to see which the year, reasons, and which country sent various animals into space. The animals to take flight were a rooster, duck, and sheep in 1783 in Versailles. There is some tragedy along with amazement in the book too. Some of the animals did not return back but were commemorated for their efforts. Laika, being one of those animals, made it around Earth orbit before she passed. She was given a Viking Warrior's Funeral and a statue in her name in 1997 in Moscow, Russia. Unfortunately, as we advanced our rockets animals were our first test subject, many of them made it safe and made it possible for us to safely travel space. We pass on their memories by learning about them and understanding what they did to make it possible for us (Not saying that it was the right thing to do but now we have amazing laws protecting animal rights). As we made progress we started sending other animals and creatures into space like butterflies, sea monkeys, and even starfish! This book about Space and animals is still a marvelous read about humans and animals achievement in space travel and even life in space. 

[Sara Casalino]

Very interesting information!