Discovering Mars

This is an encyclopedic (or perhaps "everything but the kitchen sink") book about Mars, suitable for upper elementary grades. It is jammed packed with facts related to Mars. To me, it felt a bit incoherent, but kids needing to do research on Mars may find it a good reference.

Title: Discovering Mars
Author: Melvin Berger
Publication info: Scholastic, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-545-83960-0
Sample page:

This is an encyclopedic (or perhaps "everything but the kitchen sink") book about Mars, suitable for upper elementary grades.  (Guiding reading level T / Lexile 910.)  It is 62 pages jammed packed with facts related to Mars (including pages about how it got its name, the 1938 Halloween radio hoax, canali, etc).  To me, it felt a bit incoherent, but kids needing to do research on Mars may find it a good reference.  Individual page spreads look great, but the first part of the book skips from page to page a bit disjointedly.  I picture it as a research source, but not as independently great reading.

There's nice coverage of the different missions and the search for life in the second half of the book, concluding with a couple brief pages of speculation about what it would take to get humans to Mars and back.  Pages range from line art to actual photos to photo-realistic illustrations.  I've included one sample page, but they're so widely variable that no one page really represents the full range.

Diversity:  The few scientists mentioned by name or pictured are white males, BUT most of the book is photos of the planet and robots and probes, so the lack of diversity is less apparent than in some books.

My five year old is a huge book fan, especially books about science.  She'll gladly sit to listen to an hour of reading, but I lost her a few minutes into this book.  Coaches of FLL Jr teams might pick a page or two for reading aloud during a team session, but it is better as a reference than a narrative.

Click here to see all our reviews!