I think it is outstanding that children are getting interested in outer space again. For too long, the idea of exploring our universe seemed like it had stalled, and with it so did our interest in the stars.
But now we are on the cusp of a new generation of astronauts heading off into the unknown. Not only are kids dreaming of the moon, but dreaming of Mars as well. The kicker is some of them will actually get to the Red Planet.
Whether you are looking for a holiday gift for a space enthusiast or just some engaging space exploration reading for your kids, this list will provide you with books for kids of all ages (even adult ones!)
Space Books For Toddlers and Other Young Readers
Written for preschoolers to grade 3, the First Book of Space is a typical National Geographic book filled with information. The book starts, in the first chapter looking from the earth, explaining what you see, the sun and moon, and its effect on our planet. Then, the chapters are dedicated to planets, including dwarf planets, moving farther away from earth into the universe to the Milky Way, galaxies and space travel.
Informative content with beautiful illustrations and photographs by awarding winning illustrator David Aguilar brings space to life. Pop-up facts about each planet will fascinate young minds. The text is easily readable for beginner readers.
Age Range: 4-8 years
The board book’s cover will withstand handling by toddlers. With 70 nested flaps, preschoolers and kindergarten kids may enjoy discoveries and facts about space, space stations, and spaceflight hidden within the flaps.
Beautiful illustrations and hidden nuggets explain to toddlers the concept of floating in space, that the Earth isn’t the only planet, about space stations, and galaxies.
Rob Lloyd Jones creatively used double-page spreads to colorfully explain space concepts, the stars, moon, comets, planets, and astronomy history. By lifting the flaps and the nested flaps, readers can see what goes on inside the space stations, how astronauts visited the moon, and what’s floating out there.
Age Range: 3 and Up
A breathtaking adventure for beginner readers that takes them through the solar system. For kids familiar with the Cat in the Hat series of Dr. Seuss, this book on space will delight them and at the same time have the literary impact Dr. Seuss’ books are known for.
The book isn’t written by Dr. Seuss; author Tish Rabe, however, follows his style. Readers will recognize the creative rhymes, humor, and phrases associated with his books. The delightful rhymes help kids learn facts about space while they discover the eight planets alongside Cat in the Hat, Thing One, Thing Tow, Dick, and Sally.
Age Range: 4 – 8 year old
Cartoonist and Awkward Yeti creator, Nick Seluk, tell readers why the sun has been Employee of the Month for billions of years. He explains how the sun keeps the earth warm; how the sun influences day and night, and its role at keeping our solar system together. No wonder Jupiter wants Sun’s autograph.
Straightforward facts about the sun are delivered with cartoon humor and characteristics. Each spread feature bite-size facts understandable to preschoolers to third graders. The entertaining bubble comments from the Planets adds to the arty cartoons that will delight adults and kids.
The book is funny but informative, a great combination to teach young kids difficult concepts.
Age Range: 3-7 years
Age Range: 2-4 years
A basic introduction about outer space for toddlers created by the American Museum of Natural History Peter and Connie Roop award-winning authors of over 100 children’s books. The board book uses flaps to gradually introduce the sun and the planets to readers.
The flaps are easy to turn for toddlers. The different sized flap draws kids’ attention and motivates interaction. Each flap reveals colorful pictures and interesting facts about a celestial body including the Milky Way. Text is simple to read and with about 20 words about each planet, easy for young kids to understand.
A fun book for curious minds who want to know more about space.
Age Range: 3 and Up
Divided into three sections, Stars, Explore Space, and The Night Sky, the book explains and help teenagers discover stars and space. True to their form of publishing highly visual photographic nonfiction, DK Publishers, used NASA photos and 3D images to display the wonders of the universe.
As part of the Knowledge Encyclopedia series, the book’s outlay is encyclopedic in nature. Packed with facts, details, and descriptions using infographics, diagrams, timelines, and data boxes to highlight and explain makes space come alive to readers.
Hi-tech design, up-to-date images, and interesting topics are discussed and illustrated in detail to captivate a teen’s mind. Learn about the birth, life, and death of stars; how the first astronauts explored the moon on foot; the details about the moon buggies they used later on; and how asteroids race around Mars and Jupiter.
Age Range: 9-13 years
John Read, who taught thousands of kids how to explore the night sky through a telescope, shares his knowledge in this book.
An updated version was published in January 2019. As a reference book, it will guide and enrich a young stargazer’s experience. Discover how to identify constellations, nebulae, galaxies, and stars. With clear plotted routes and images of the sky, novice stargazers can star hop with or without a telescope.
Packed with John Read’s years of experience but done in such a user-friendly way that it isn’t too technical for readers to understand. Beginners may easily follow the explanations and illustrations.
Age Range: 7-12 years old
A science comic for comic lovers who want to explore the solar system. In their quest, Sarah, Jill, and their pets, adventure through the solar system, discovering fascinating facts and details about the planets. The animal characters have a multi-party conversation about the planets.
To relieve her sick friend Jill’s boredom, Sara creates the spaceship ‘Unbored’ manned with their pets. As they travel the solar system, they report ‘home’ with the details about each planet they discover. Since the spaceship runs on ‘enthusiplasma’, fuel made from Sara’s enthusiasm, it is vital that the pets send back interesting facts about the objects they discover in space.
Age Range: 9 to 13 Years Old
Author Martin Jenkins and illustrator Stephen Biesty introduce the night sky and space to middle-schoolers. In a simplistic way, they tell readers about man landing on the moon, robots sent to Mars, and robotic probes sent into the universe millions of miles away from earth.
The book starts with a grand tour by Voyager of the outer solar system. With that in mind, the book goes back in time to China and the first recorded astronomy data.
With descriptive illustrations and easy reading, the book takes the reader on a journey of the history of space and humankind’s role, from the past into the future. Find out what are the possibilities for human space travels and what will remain a dream.
Age Range: 8 to 12 years of age
Trivia facts, quizzes, mazes, coded and encrypted phrases and crossword puzzles could project kids’ minds into outer space. It opens the door of interest for a kid to want to explore. Authors Kathi Wagner and Sheryl Racine gladly assist enthusiast to ride on a rocket into outer space.
The book is nicely balanced with activities, facts, illustrations, and fun tidbits. Illustrations of kids doing things draw kids in to want to participate; they learn about space by completing the puzzles, quizzes, and other activities. Silly jokes and drawings lighten the experience.
Although in black-and-white, the books’ content and the way it’s presented won’t have you miss color that younger readers may prefer.
Age Range: 7-12 years
The revised and updated version will be available from September 17, 2019.
Armed with glow-in-the-dark stickers and a star finder tool, more than a quarter of a million young stargazer globally, have enjoyed discovering the mysteries of the night sky.
Michael Driscoll takes kids to the beginning of how a star is born, the story of the solar system, and what is truth versus myth. The book also guides novices on how to explore the sky, to learn what is out there for astronauts explore.
Imaginative illustrations, sidebar definitions, and interesting explanations may intrigue readers to wanting to know more about constellations, space stations, and planets.
Age Range: 8-12 years
Authors Patricia J. Wynne and Donald M. Silver won a 2015 Moonbeam Children’s book award for their coloring book about the solar system. The book takes a kid’s view of our solar system, answer questions like what happened to Pluto and where do we live among the galaxies.
There are thirty-nine illustrations to color accompanied by captions that explain topics like weightlessness, constellations, and how craters are formed. The good quality paper makes it easy to fold flat for coloring in without tearing the pages.
The illustrations are intricate and detailed enough for middle-schoolers and even high school kids who enjoy astronomy. Click edit button to change this text. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
Age Range: 8-14 years
Terence Dickinson’s classic book on astronomy for beginners gets better with each update. Illustrated with over 500 colored photographs and images, the book answers the questions most novices would ask.
The updated edition includes the latest telescopes for novices to advanced users, an accessories catalog that flags irrelevant items, and 20 full-color page atlas of the Milky Way. If photography is your interest, then the chapter on astrophotography with digital cameras would be helpful.
In a conversational tone, the author guides novices through the possibilities and practicalities of backyard astronomy. Information is comprehensive and detailed enough for readers to make informative decisions. The book covers daytime, twilight, planet, and deep space observations. It tells you how to target and what to do to see certain objects in space.
Age Range: 14 and Up
An in-depth fully illustrated 400 pages of the history of space exploration. The content covers global space expeditions from its origins in ancient times of the Romans, Greeks, and Chinese to the discoveries of Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler.
As a comprehensive guide, the book gives valuable up-to-date information about famous history-making experiences like Sputnik 1 and Apollo Moon Landing, as well as less well-known pioneering work making space exploration possible.
Lastly, the book speculates on future possibilities in exploring the unknown and space tourism.
The extent of the detail and information, author Roger D. Launius presented in the book may delight space enthusiasts and astronomy geeks.
Age Range: 14 to Adult
Age Range: 14 to Adults
When an author loves the subject they write about, their enthusiasm inspires readers more than just reading a book about a topic. Dallas Campbell’s love of space is embedded in the book. It takes the reader on a journey of the human history of space.
A combination of scientific facts, history, and the entertaining story draws the reader to travel through space as the author describes what a space traveler would find if they left earth for the wonders of the universe. The author didn’t omit sticky issues but craftily used song score to address it.
A good read for kids interested in space travel. Space enthusiasts may also find nuggets in the book they didn’t know.
Age Range: 11 and Up
Steve Fentress used paper-and-pencil exercises to show the geometrical principles of solar system astronomy. Starting with basics like orbital distances and object sizes he helps readers understand and calculate distances in the solar system.
Readers will be able to answer their own questions with simple mathematics, for example, if you were on Jupiter, how large will Jupiter’s moons be compared to our moon and sky.
The book gives an in-depth insight into future eclipses, what happens during solar eclipses. The explanations on the movements of the moon and its shadows show readers how to predict solar eclipses using the Saros cycle.
As a planetarium director, the author used his years of experience to create a book that will fascinate lovers of space. It is also a great tool to use for as activities for homeschoolers, as science projects or to delight amateur astronomers.
Age Range: 14 year olds to Adults will enjoy this book
A user-friendly book for novice stargazer who want to discover the Big Dipper and beyond. The book guides beginners on how to stargaze constellations and takes them deeper into finding celestial bodies that novices can achieve.
An easy read, the book is about 30 pages. It doesn’t overwhelm the beginner but gently starts them on their adventure of stargazing. A classic book with great illustrations, that will help readers who are interested in stargazing.
Age Range: 10 and up
The name of the book is enough to grab a reader’s attention. With more than 150,000 copies sold, authors Guy Consolmagno and Dan M. Davis have created a practical guide for stargazers to use with their telescope. The spiral binding and large pages make it easy to use outside.
Each spread illustrates how objects look through a telescope. The latest version was adapted to the changes in modern technology used in telescopes. To stay current with stargazing, the book provides a website link that has up-to-date tables and images.
In addition to the in-depth discussion of the moon, stars, and planets the book also covers the Southern Hemisphere celestial objects.
Age Range: All Ages will enjoy this book