This guide rounds up the best space books for preteens. We've included a range of books and book types, suitable for children of all ages. The best space books for kids are colorful, educational and inspiring, and we've rounded up our favorites right here.
If your youngster is interested in space, providing them with space books can be a great way to nurture their interest (and not to mention feed a love of reading). Telling stories set in space or providing facts in beautiful, easy to digest ways, all of these books will help foster a love of space and STEM subjects in your kids.
If you want more ideas, we've also got a guide to the best space books for kids. Or if you want something for yourself (or an older kid), take a look at our best space books for adults.
The quick list
An inspiring and accessible picture book and the eleven year old who named the newly-discovered Pluto back in 1930.
A love letter to our planet and everything that makes it, Here We Are is for everyone from babies to grandparents.
This number-based picture book is a great way to introduce young children to mathematical concepts and numbers too big to comprehend.
This uplifting book is the story of Neil Armstrong, and teaches kids not only about his career but the importance of never giving up on your dreams.
The true story of NASA's Margaret Hamilton and the work she did across Apollo missions 8, 9, 10 and 11. It's beautifully illustrated and an important story for all children, especially girls, proving they can do anything.
This is a fun introduction to stargazing for kids confident enough to read by themselves. Learn about comets, the moon and more.
The Girl Who Named Pluto
✅ You like beautiful art: It's wonderfully illustrated throughout.
❌ You want something in-depth: This is a very quick read, perfect for reading with young children.
🔎 The Girl Who Named Pluto: Educational and informative, this is a beautiful story of a real-life girl that kids of all ages will be able to connect with. ★★★★½
How did an 11-year-old English schoolgirl come to name Pluto? In The Girl Who Named Pluto: The Story of Venetia Burney, Alice B. McGinty recounts one child's history-making turn on a fateful morning in 1930. Although the book is aimed at kids ages 4 to 8, there's plenty for older children to connect with as well. And the vintage-flavored illustrations by Elizabeth Haidle make the experience a visual delight.
Venetia had connected her love of mythology with her knowledge of science to christen the new planet after the Roman god of the underworld, refusing to let her age or gender to hold her back.
McGinley says she hopes Venetia's tale inspires her readers — girls, in particular. "I hope girls read it and feel empowered to be part of the scientific process," she said. "I hope boys read it and feel empowered, too, and understand how important girls are to science.
Here We Are
✅ You want something everyone can enjoy: Any age will enjoy this gorgeous book.
❌ You want to learn about space: Jeffers' book focuses on Earth.
🔎 Here We Are: Few books are as beautiful as this one. It's suitable for anyone from the age of 2, written with fantastic prose we can all enjoy. ★★★★★
Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth, by bestselling author and illustrator Oliver Jeffers, is many different things. It's a love letter to his newborn son. It's a toddler-friendly guide to the big, blue marble we call home. Or, as Jeffers' editor joked, it's a book for "new babies, new parents and misplaced humans." But most of all, it's a manual for how to be a standup human being, one who is tolerant, respectful and unfailingly kind.
Jeffers's jewel-toned renderings, liberally sprinkled with details that invite closer inspection, evoke the planet's immensity with warmth and gentility. Yet for all its enormity — at least, from our vantage point — Earth barely registers in the vast expanse of space. We are impossibly fragile. And, for better or worse, we're all in it together.
"We may all look different, act different and sound different … but don’t be fooled, we are all people," Jeffers writes. "There is enough for everyone."
A Hundred Billion Trillion Stars
✅ You like fun facts: Fishman's book is peppered with fun facts, like the number of teeth a shark has, or the distance between the Earth and the Moon.
❌ You don't like numbers: Numbers are the basis of everything in this book.
🔎 A Hundred Billion Trillion Stars: This is a fun and educational way to introduce young children to impossibly big numbers, and it's filled with cool and interesting facts. ★★★★
In A Hundred Billion Trillion Stars, Seth Fishman Tackles the numbers that permeate everything around us. Not just any numbers, mind you, but enormous numbers. Gigantic, mind-bogglingly tremendous whoppers of numbers. Numbers that the human mind can scarcely comprehend.
Accompanied by delightful illustrations by Isabel Greenberg, Fishman makes infinitesimal figures like the number of seconds in a year (31,536,000), the distance between the Earth and the moon (240,000 miles), and how many people go shoulder-to-shoulder every day on our big blue marble (7,500,000,000) relatable to the four-to-eight age group.
"A child isn't necessarily going to get the number of raindrops in a thunderstorm (1,620, 000,000,000,000)," Fishman said, "but maybe it'll help them connect with what the word 'trillion' means because they know what a thunderstorm looks like." He also throws in fun facts that pint-size readers will take delight in. Who knew that a great white shark has about 300 teeth? Or that we might eat up to 70 pounds of bugs in our lifetime? Fishman's numbers will thrill, amaze, and elucidate.
I Am Neil Armstrong
✅ You want an uplifting story: Not only is this Armstrong's story, it's an uplifting tale about never giving up on your dreams.
❌ You want something in-depth: It's written for young children, so it's not exactly biography-level in detail.
🔎 I Am Neil Armstrong: A rich and well illustrated look at Neil Armstrong's life, from his younger days all the way through to Apollo 11. ★★★★
I Am Neil Armstrong, a children's book by bestselling author and History Channel host Brad Meltzer, shows kids how never giving up got Neil Armstrong all the way to the moon.
Meltzer artfully captures Armstrong's journey through life, beginning with his childhood and going all the way through his historic first steps on the lunar surface.
But Meltzer doesn't just focus on those famous steps. He begins the story decades before the Apollo 11 mission with a very young Armstrong trying to climb to the top of a silver maple tree. After falling and getting back up, Armstrong continued this pattern of determination throughout his career.
Armstrong's story of inspiration is masterfully executed in this colorful, delightful biography, and the accompanying illustrations by Christopher Eliopoulos really help bring the book to life.
Margaret and the Moon
✅ You want something inspirational: Margaret Hamilton's real-life story is very inspirational.
❌ You want to learn about the planets: This is all about Margaret's time working at NASA with missions centered around the moon.
🔎 Margaret and the Moon: This is a fantastic real-life story that proves to be truly inspirational to kids of all ages, particularly young girls. ★★★★½
In Margaret and the Moon: How Margaret Hamilton Saved the First Lunar Landing, Dean Robbins outlines the pioneering software engineer's life, from the backyard of her childhood home, where she posed a million questions about the night sky, to the hallways of NASA, where she led a team from MIT to develop the onboard flight software that would land the first men on the moon.
When an accident threatened to abort the Apollo 11 moon landing, Hamilton swooped in to save the day with her smarts and preparation.
At a time when women were expected to stay in the home and raise children, Hamilton’s role in the Apollo program was "revelatory," according to Robbins. He said he hopes his young readers will find a strong role model in Hamilton, who solved problems large and small with creativity and fearlessness. "In my wildest dreams, readers of 'Margaret and the Moon' will grow up to make the next great breakthroughs in whatever they choose to do," he said.
Looking Up!
✅ Your kids are just getting into stargazing: It offers a great introduction to looking through a telescope.
❌ Your kids are older: This is aimed at 6-8 year olds, so older kids might find it a little basic.
🔎 Look Up!: This is a great primer to stargazing, teaching young kids about various celestial bodies they'll be able to see through a telescope. ★★★½
For first through third graders who are curious about the night sky, Joe Rao's fact-filled early-reader chapter book, Look Up!: The Science of Stargazing will satisfy basic questions about the sun and the moon, the stars, the planets, comets and meteors in an engaging, age-appropriate manner.
Rao debunks the notion that viewing an eclipse at the moment of totality — that is, the few minutes when the sun is fully engulfed by the moon — is harmful to the naked eye. Once the sun is totally covered, you can look and "be amazed at one of Mother Nature's most spectacular sights," he writes. But turn away once the sun starts peeking out lest you be blinded, or use one of the safe viewing techniques he recommends to continue observing the spectacle.
You'll also learn interesting facts about comets (did you know they're sometimes called 'hairy stars'?) as well as everything else that you might be able to catch a glimpse of through a telescope in your back yard.
How we test
Since this guide is concerned with books suitable for kids, we've carefully selected books that are engaging, easy to read and suitable for a large age range. These are books that children can enjoy from a young age all the way through to the pre-teen years; books with beautiful images that are both enjoyable to read and richly educational.
While we don't have full reviews of these books, we have read and considered the content in each book, ensuring they're suitable for the intended age range. They are all books we enjoy ourselves and those of us with families would gladly share these books with our own children.
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