I come from a large family of bookish people, so when we gather for Xmas, we exchange books for all the small ones. My older Squishie is fascinated by Space, so this book was an obvious choice for him. It’s a wonderful, inspirational book about facing your fears and living your dreams.
–Side note: there is no Jakku in this book. Older Squishie is constantly looking for info about Jakku in his Space books and is convinced that maybe I’m just not that good at reading, since I can never find it for him. —
Chris Hadfield is a very famous astronaut and was the first Canadian Commander of the International Space Station. He lived in space for 5 months! Before he became a famous astronaut, and in fact, before it was even possible for a Canadian to go to space, he was a little boy in southern Ontario dreaming of the stars.
This beautifully written and illustrated book is about the summer of 1969, when young Chris watched the moon landing and realised that his dreams of exploring space and meeting aliens were impossible because “Outer Space was the darkest dark ever.” And poor Chris was afraid of the dark. The dark was full of the worst, scariest kind of aliens.
Chris’ love of Space and his passion to live out his dreams gave him the courage to face his fear and see that the Dark of Space was full of power and mystery and beauty. You are never alone if you can live your dreams.
This book is beautiful and has a wonderful message, I highly recommend for any potential astronauts. Or any dreamers at all.
There’s an episode of Bookaboo (Amazon’s attempt at Reading Rainbow) in which Cdr Hadfield reads this book to the puppet. It’s very charming :)