You Are the First Kid on Mars (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: You Are the First Kid on Mars Elizabeth Bush O'Brien, Patrick . You Are the First Kid on Mars; written and illus. by Patrick O'Brien. Putnam, 200932 p. ISBN 978-0-399-24634-0$16.99 Ad 5-8 yrs O'Brien directly invites the audience to imagine what it would be like to "ride a rocket" to a space colony on Mars and tour base and its environs. The first leg of the trip stretches from Earth to a space station, from which the wayfarer is launched on the four-month journey to the Red Planet. After a safe parachute landing, the child is shown to small, comfortable quarters and taken on tours of the greenhouse and visits to sites where scientists try to solve mysteries of the planet's genesis and morphology. Six months later, it's back to Earth, knowing you've "gone where no kid has gone before." The overt allusion to the Star Trek franchise is no accident: the arresting digital artwork strongly recalls Enterprise interiors and the stark, dusty sets of extraterrestrial worlds. Even the young boy whose adventure is portrayed here sports the awestruck wistfulness of a kiddy Trekker. Although two pages of Martian miscellanea round out the presentation, there's no commentary offered on the feasibility of many of the technologies proposed here: the Earth-to-space-station [End Page 33] cable elevator, the Nuclear Thermal Rocket, the construction robots, the MarsPlane designed for thin atmosphere. Youngsters who aren't too finicky about the science behind the journey, however, will find their imaginations piqued by this agreeable futurist exercise. Copyright © 2009 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois