posted on 20 Jul 2023

How to Spacewalk: Step-by-step with Shuttle Astronauts by Katheryn D. Sullivan and Michael J. Rosen

As a young working-class teenager living in the industrial heart of Britain’s second city during the 1960s, the American space programme was a thing of fascination and wonder. Watching the first moon landing on a black and white television screen was a mesmerising experience and for months after I collected as much of the ephemeral memorabilia that came along after the event as I could. The extraordinary image of the ‘Earth rise’ was on my bedroom wall almost until I finally left home.

Sadly, over the years, all those special edition magazines and photographs have been lost along the way but what hasn’t been lost is my fascination with space, astronomy and my admiration for the extraordinary bravery of the space pioneers who risked their life in pursuit of scientific advancement.

I didn’t grow up to be a scientist and so I look on their work with awe. Not only are astronauts astonishing scientists, they are remarkably dedicated, disciplined and staggeringly brave. This new book for younger readers that has been put together by Katheryn D. Sullivan and her writing partner, Michael J. Rosen serves to underline the way all of these qualities have to come together in order to create an individual capable of not just travelling into space but actually venturing outside the comparative safety of a shuttle vehicle and actually walking in space itself. And who would know all this better than Sullivan – she was, after all, the very first American woman to undertake this fantastic feat.

The book is brought to us by MIT Kids Press, an imprint of Walker Books, and is a glossy landscape format that utilises both photography and graphic illustration. We follow the space-mad young girl through the whole process of going from schoolgirl to NASA applicant, to astronaut trainee, into the shuttle, out of the door and into space and then, thankfully, safely back to Earth. And that journey will take us to all sorts of fantastic information about all things space travel related. 

If you want to know what makes up a space suit, you’ll find it here.

If you’re interested to know what meteors are, you’ll find it here.

And, should you ever find yourself on the verge of taking your own walk in space, you’ll remember the life-saving (and life affirming) tips you will find in-between the covers of this book.

Published in July of this year, you will be able to get a copy from your local independent bookshop and if they don’t have copies on their shelves, they will be happy to order it for you.

 

Terry Potter

July 2023