Children's Literature
- Trina Heidt
You are going to Mars. What do you need to do to prepare? What will Mars be like? What will you find? What is your mission once you arrive? The object of Life on Mars is to engage and prepare the reader for his/her trip to Mars. This is accomplished by combining interesting facts and theories about Mars with guided imagery and, in a sense, imaginative role-playing. Getz is asking the reader to step into the shoes (or should I say boots) of one of the first astronauts to travel to Mars. Strap yourself in, prepare for take-off, and let Getz and his experts prepare you for the journey of a lifetime.
School Library Journal
Gr 3-6Is there? Was there? Could there be? In an engaging mix of fact and speculation, Getz summarizes what we know of Mars's history and current state, counterbalancing the discouraging data gathered by the Viking landers with the recent discovery of life on our own planet in ancient permafrost and other seemingly inhospitable environments. He also invites young readers along on the first expedition to Mars, describing the physical and psychological hazards of long-term space flight, plus how the red planet may eventually come to be terraformed and colonized. Though the author attributes the discovery of Mars's "canals" to Percival Lowell rather than Giovanni Schiaperelli and notes last summer's controversial discovery of possible life signs in a Martian meteorite only in a brief final chapter, the information is generally accurate, specific, and, a real plus, gathered in some part from interviews with astronauts and other scientists. The black-and-white illustrations, a mixture of paintings, NASA photos, and reproductions, are profuse, evocative, and well placed. A lively, widely focused introduction to a big question in science that will certainly be answered in the near future.John Peters, New York Public Library
Kirkus Reviews
Getz (Floating Home, p. 380, etc.) offers eager space pioneers a primer on interplanetary travel and Martian colonization. In a penetrating second-person, you-are-there narration, he parades an amusing array of falsehoods and hysteria perpetrated in the name of Earth's neighbor, such as astronomer Percival Lowell's assumption in 1894 that the lines he saw on Mars's surface were canals, or the 1938 radio broadcast of H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds. But it is Getz's deft juggling of scientific facts that is truly engaging. Although the Martian soil is nearly antiseptic and incapable of supporting even the tiniest amino acids, the planet will, at the hands of scientists, get an environmental face lift via terraforming. During the journey to Mars, only vigorous exercise will offset the weakening of muscles and subsequent loss of bone strength in zero gravity; the crew will sleep "standing up," and use a toilet with a seat belt. The numerous black-and-white satellite photos and computer- generated landscapes bring the alien terrain up close and personal; McCarty's charcoal drawings lend a sense of excitement to this lighthearted interstellar adventure.
