Book Review

The Mystery of Mars by Sally Ride and Tam O’Shaughnessy is a great book. It provides recent information about Mars and about spacecraft.

I like this book because it tells a lot about Pathfinder. I like Pathfinder. The book also gives scientific information about the Earth and how the solar system was created. At the end of the book there is a timeline of the spacecraft history. The book compares Earth and Mars. The writing style is great. The information is clear and well presented. At the beginning it is a little tiny bit confusing until you get used to it. The book tells new information before additional facts. The illustrations are mostly color photographs. The Mystery of Mars was published in 1999 before Opportunity and Spirit got there.

The book made me want to learn more about Mars.

~ Brandon Smith, Hawthorne School
"Read, Write & Win!" 2004, Third Place / 4th Grade


This book has many things about Mars in it that some people don't know. Mars has the biggest mountains in the solar system. Mars has polar ice caps on the North and South Poles. On Mars the seasons change. The author is the first woman astronaut.

~ Danny C. Hawthorne School Student, Brunswick

The Mystery of Mars is a superb book full of wonderful, informative pictures. The text, written in straightforward uncompromising prose, and the illustrations, contain a most pleasant surprise. To solidify her arguments about the possibility of life on Mars, Sally Ride compares and contrasts the evolution of Mars with that of Earth so that we are treated to a brief history of our own earth, starting with the primordial gasses that formed the sun and then the planets. The Mystery of Mars can be read with pleasure and profit in an hour by people of all ages but it is especially appropriate for young readers.

~ Lee Grodzins, Ph.D., Physicist, Professor Emeritus, MIT