This is a fun and informative book that gives young people (and their parents) a peek into what exploration of other planets entails. Rusch does a good job of representing both the exciting highlights and the long stretches of waiting for communications between Earth and Mars. My 11-year-old is more of a history kid, but he enjoyed it fairly well. (This is a title from the Level 6 Build Your Library curriculum booklist.) ( )

The idea of these books, to show science as an exciting human activity of real people, is good. But the only behavior that scientists can engage in that is deemed appropriate for this audience is being superstitious and uttering banal cliches. Oh well.

A choice was made to distinguish between the two rovers using male and female pronouns. Unfortunately, this does perpetuate gender stereotypes, as Spirit gets stuck in the difficult situation, and Opportunity breezes along, only suffering an accident when "he" is too reckless. Gack. ( )

Summary: This book is full of information detailing the Mars exploration as it related to the Mars rovers exploration, specifically of Spirit rover, and it's twin, Opportunity.

Personal reaction: Here I go again! Teaching what I enjoy! ha. I LOVED following the Mars Rovers! I was captivated by them. I remember how sad I felt when they became stuck, in soft soil and the engineers tried for months, then years, to develop algorithms and design fixes, fast, to try and get the wheels to spin and respin and move, to dig out of the soft sand. Ultimately, it would prove unsuccessful, but still, the images the rovers sent back, from Mars, were incredible!!!

Classroom extensions: We could make pretend Nasa helmets out of cardboard and pretend we were astronauts, on the moon.

We could collect rocks outside and pretend they were rocks from Mars.

This is part of the SCIENCE-IN-THE-FIELD series for middle school children but it is a good all-ages introduction to the exploration of Mars by rovers. Lots of interesting facts and great photographs. Not only did I like it but my husband spent some time with it and commented on how well done it was.

Both Spirit and Opportunity left Earth on different days in 2003 and both arrived safely in good working order. To the surprise of the people involved the rovers both lasted for years rather than the 3 months initially planned and Opportunity was still sending home data in 2011. This may have been the most successful Mars mission to date as far as surface exploration goes.

I really learned a lot from this book. The pictures were fantastic and the information was really helpful. Spirit and Opportunity were sent to Mars to see if if Mars ever had life and send back photos. Scientist hoped the two would last 3 months with their solar power, but they both lasted 6 years. The deep craters and jagged mountains are great to see and hear about.