About This Book:
The extraordinary true story of America’s first female astronauts hailed as “suspenseful, meticulously observed, enlightening” by Margot Lee Shetterly, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Figures, now adapted for young readers.
Sally Ride may have been the first US woman in space, but did you know there were five other incredible American women who helped blaze the trail for female astronauts by her side?
When NASA sent astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s, the agency excluded women from the corps, arguing that only military test pilots—a group women were also aggressively barred from—had the right stuff. But as the 1980s dawned so did new thinking, and six elite women scientists—Sally Ride, Judith Resnik, Anna Lee Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Rhea Seddon—set out to prove they had exactly the right stuff to become the first US women astronauts.
In The Six Young Readers Edition, acclaimed journalist Loren Grush shows how these brilliant and courageous women fought to enter STEM fields they were discouraged from pursuing, endured claustrophobic—and often deeply sexist—media attention, underwent rigorous survival training, and prepared for years to take multi-million-dollar equipment into orbit.
Told with contributions from nearly all the living participants and now adapted for young readers, this book is an inspiring testament to their struggles, accomplishments, and sacrifices and how they built the tools that made the space program run. It’s a legacy that lives on to inspire young people today.
*Review Contributed By Karen Yingling, Staff Reviewer*
Women Pioneers in Space Exploration
After learning about the women’s early years, we get a good look at how their experience with NASA was. Having to compete against each other for key roles, such as being the US woman to go into space, must have been very difficult. The book does a great job at laying out relationships without the space program, challenges that were faced, and personal difficulties that played into each woman’s career.
Perhaps my favorite scene in the book is the portrayal of Nichelle Nichols, of Star Trek fame, filming a recruitment ad for NASA aimed especially at women and people of color. Had I seen THAT when I was preparing for college, I might have been much more interested in space.
Massimino’s Spaceman (Adapted for Young Readers): The True Story of a Young Boy’s Journey to Becoming an Astronaut (2020), Buckley’s Michael Collins: Forgotten Astronaut (2019), Bolden’s Star Sailor (2024), but it’s much harder to find books specifically about women in the space program. This is a long book (at 342 pages, only 100 pages shorter than the adult version), and the ARC didn’t have any pictures in it, so it’s a better choice for more mature middle grade readers who have a decided interest in women’s history or NASA. More casual readers will want to pick up the fantastic book by O’Shaughnessy, Sally Ride: A Photobiography of America’s Pioneering Woman in Space, which does a great job of telling one of the stories of The Six, beautifully illustrated with a wealth of Ride’s personal photos, which is still one of my favorite biographies.
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