Part of the bestselling Little People, Big Dreams series, this simple picture book biography of astronaut Sally Ride follows her from childhood through her days as an astronaut and later teaching career.
Readers learn about how her parents encouraged her and her sister to be “reaching for the stars”; her early love of science and math; her skill at tennis; and the teacher who inspired her to become a scientist. We follow her through her selection as one of the first women in NASA’s astronaut program, and the first to fly beyond the Earth—and we see the sexism she still faced. After seven colleagues lost their lives in a shuttle explosion, too, Ride used her skills to try and figure out what went wrong so it wouldn’t happen again.
Later, we see Ride became a teacher, conveying her knowledge of physics and space to young people. She also started a company “with her partner, Tam” to inspire children, especially girls, “to get excited about science.” An image shows the two of them reading books with a roomful of children. The book doesn’t make Sally and Tam’s romantic relationship entirely clear; “partner,” while accurate, is also ambiguous, and Tam could easily be read as a business partner. “Life partner” would have been better—but I credit author Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara with at least mentioning Tam someplace; not all children’s biographies of Ride have done so. (Adults may still wish to point out to young readers that the women lived together in a loving relationship.)
Nothing is said of Ride’s death from pancreatic cancer, which feels like the right choice for the target age group. Ride’s example, the book concludes, will continue motivating young people to keep learning, discovering more about the world, and reaching for the stars.
Backmatter includes some further details of Ride’s life and four photographs.
