Almost Astronauts – Tanya Lee Stone

Almost astronauts: 13 women who dared to dream tells the story of how in the early days of NASA, women were kept out of the astronaut program.  No matter that the women tested were shown to have a greater tolerance to isolation then the men.  No matter that it is more cost effective to send women into space because they typically weigh less.  None of that mattered at the time.  Read this book to find out the reasons, which really were no more than bad excuses.  What you discover may be surprising.

This book is well written and has a lot of great photographs.  While reading I was entirely interested and felt excited, angry, sad, exhilarated, vindicated and so very proud.  I am going to stay Earth bound, but I am happy that there are women, and men, who are willing to go and explore beyond our planet for all of us.  Oh, and I am also thankful.

~ The author includes a lot of great references to read more about the Mercury 13 and the women who came after.

King George: what was his problem? – Steve Sheinkin Illustated by Tim Robinson

I read a book about the American Revolution over the holiday weekend. King George: what was his problem?: everything your schoolbooks didn’t tell you about the American Revolution.

This book has fun quotes, interesting tidbits and great illustrations.  Read this book and you will learn that John Adams and Benjamin Franklin did not share living quarters very well!

Did you know (or remember) that General Cornwallis had a spy in the position of his personal waiter? His name was James Armistead and he was a slave who got permission from his owner to join the revolution.  General Cornwallis eventually asked Armistead to spy on the Americans for him.  Ha!  A double agent!

This book was great fun to read.

Fantastic books about animals that you shouldn’t miss

A beautiful nonfiction book from a few years ago, Priceless : the vanishing beauty of a fragile planet by Bradley Trevor Greive with photographs by Mitsuaki Iwago, has images of endangered animals in their natural environment along with a plea for humanity to take care of the environment. It suggests that we need to think about how what we do impacts the lives of animals. The jacket image in this post does not always match the cover of the DPL’s book.  For some reason the jacket in the blog keeps switching between the chimpanzee and the loris.  Our book has the chimpanzee on the cover. 

Owen and Mzee : the true story of a remarkable friendship by Isabella and Craig Hatkoff, and Paula Kahumbu, with photographs by Peter Greste. “When a baby hippo named Owen was stranded after the Dec 2004 tsunami, villagers in Kenya worked tirelessly to rescue him. Then, to everyone’s amazement, the orphan hippo and a 130-yr-old giant tortoise named Mzee adopted each other.”