by Helen Taylor; illus. by Stevie Lewis
Primary    Little, Brown    40 pp.
10/23    9780316367745    $18.99

Tapping into a source of fascination for many kids, Taylor explores the complicated, potentially messy, and sometimes gross process of eating and drinking as an astronaut on a space station—from what food choices are available and how they’re prepared, to meal etiquette, to the practicalities of keeping one’s food in the right place in a zero-gravity environment. Taylor’s conversational tone means that asides about oddities like what happens to the trash or why it’s bad to burp in space (more than just air comes back up your esophagus, oh no!) feel naturally incorporated. Lewis’s digital art features crisp, energetic scenes of smiling astronauts and their meals floating through a carefully rendered space station, often focusing in on food-related details of the spacecraft such as the panel where astronauts attach food pouches for hydration. Extensive back matter includes sources, additional information on why space meals look the way they do today, further reading, and photos of real astronauts enjoying food on the International Space Station.

From the September/October 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.