So You Want To Be An Astronaut is one of nearly 200 entries in Linda Soules’s illustrated career series for young readers. It’s another great addition to the series, and a book that backs up its titles with real facts and knowledge rather than vague gesturing at wonder, opening with the striking figure that more than 700 people from over 45 countries have been to space, the youngest just 18, the oldest 90, proof that this is a dream real people have actually reached rather than a fantasy reserved for a select few.
The book structures itself around a simple question: what does this job actually involve, day to day, moment to moment? It starts by correcting a common assumption, that astronauts are thrill seekers, and insists instead that they are scientists and engineers whose main purpose aboard the International Space Station is to run research that can only happen in microgravity. Readers get specific examples: growing crystals that reveal the structure of diseases, watching flames form perfect spheres without gravity to shape them, tracking how the human body changes after months of floating.
Where the book earns its keep most is introducing to children the texture of training and daily routine, in a way that feels educational, yet not boring or patronising. Soules doesn’t just say astronauts train hard; she tells you how. For example, astronaut candidates, called ASCANs, train for at least two years before they’re even eligible for a mission, then often wait years more before they actually fly. She tells you the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory pool is the size of several Olympic pools combined, holding a full-size underwater model of the space station.
A section walking through a single day aboard the ISS breaks the schedule down hour by hour: waking at 6:00 AM by unzipping from a sleeping bag anchored to the wall, a 7:30 conference with mission control, two hours of mandatory exercise on a treadmill harness that is, by the book’s own admission, not comfortable, a science experiment where a dropped sample can float away and take twenty minutes to retrieve, a docking operation requiring full attention even though it’s mostly automated, and finally a stretch at the cupola watching the line between day and night crawl across the planet below. This is the single most useful section in the book for a kid trying to picture what the job is like on an ordinary Tuesday.
To its credit, the book doesn’t oversell the glamour either. A section called “The Hardest Parts of the Job” covers the enormous ratio of training time to actual flight time, the physical grind of readjusting to gravity after a long mission, and, more bluntly than I expected from a book pitched at this age group, the loneliness of six months away from everyone you love. Soules writes that astronauts miss birthdays, holidays, and ordinary moments that don’t come back, and that the people waiting on the ground carry that weight too.
Set against that honesty is the book’s return, more than once, to the idea it calls the Overview Effect, the shift astronauts consistently report after seeing the whole Earth with no visible borders between countries. The line that astronauts go up to see space but come back understanding Earth is a profound one.
The historical profiles of Yuri Gagarin, Valentina Tereshkova, and Mae Jemison are brief, a page or so each, but well chosen. Gagarin grew up on a collective farm. Tereshkova was a factory worker and amateur skydiver who applied to the cosmonaut program almost on a whim and flew at 26, then waited nineteen years to see another woman follow her into space. None of these profiles run more than a page, so more impatient kids are unlikely to get bored.
Unsurprisingly the “Fun Facts” section is where the book allows itself the most fun: tears forming into floating spheres instead of falling because there’s no gravity to pull them down, spacesuits smelling like burned steak, gunpowder, and raspberries after a spacewalk, a smell scientists think may be linked to the chemistry of dying stars. It’s the kind of trivia that gets read aloud at a dinner table, and it’s a smart inclusion in a book that is ultimately seeking to educate young people without boring them.
The glossary at the back is useful and more thorough than most books this length bother with, covering terms like EVA, the Kármán line, and payload specialist in plain, accessible language. The closing “What You Can Do to Prepare Right Now” checklist avoids the trap of leaving a reader with nothing but inspiration and no next step, pointing kids toward studying broadly, building physical fitness, learning the history of the space program, and, in its simplest and best suggestion, just going outside tonight and looking up.
Probably the only real negative here is a practical one rather than a content one: the text runs a bit small for younger readers, and the illustrations, as the author is upfront about in her closing note, are AI-assisted rather than hand-drawn. With 196 books and counting in this series, though, that’s an understandable trade-off rather than a real knock against the author, and it doesn’t take away from how much care has gone into the writing itself.
Officially pitched at ages 10 to 14, the book will likely work best read aloud with younger kids around 8 or 9, who’ll linger over the illustrations even if they don’t get through every page of text unassisted. Middle grade readers are the sweet spot, likely old enough to read without needing the harder words explained. Older readers, and the adults reading alongside them, may even learn something new too. The further reading list at the back is a nice addition.
Overall, this is a book that takes the biggest, most overused dream a kid can have, wanting to be an astronaut, and explains bit by bit what it actually entails. Maybe the strongest part of the book is how it walks the line between encouraging dreams and realism. A strong pick for the kid who already has a NASA poster on the wall, and an even better one for the kid who doesn’t yet but should.
Final Verdict: For young people looking to learn about life as an astronaut and fans of Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11, Hidden Figures (Young Readers’ Edition), and Endurance: My Year in Space and How I Got There (Young Readers’ Edition), this book earns its place on the shelf.
This illustrated nonfiction guide walks young readers through what it actually takes to become an astronaut, from years of ASCAN training and underwater spacewalk simulations to the physical and emotional realities of living in microgravity for months at a stretch. It covers the science behind pressurized suits and orbital mechanics, the daily rhythms of life aboard the ISS, the tools of the job, and the personal qualities that matter as much as technical skill. Historical figures like Gagarin, Tereshkova, and Jemison ground the big dream in achievable human stories, and the book closes with concrete, encouraging next steps, from studying broadly to simply going outside and looking up at the night sky.
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