We Dream of Space audiobook

Ein Kinderbuch für Kinder und Jugendliche ab 11. Mir hat es sehr gut gefallen, weil es irgendwie anders war.Wir sind im Jahr 1986 und es geht um drei sehr unterschiedliche Geschwister vor dem Hintergrund des Starts des Spaceshuttles Challenger. Besonders die zwölfjährige Bird fiebert dem Start entgegen; sie möchte irgendwann selbst einmal Astronautin werden.Es ist ein ungewöhnliches Kinderbuch, ein ernstes Buch. Es hat eine Atmosphäre, die nicht unbedingt fröhlich oder leicht/locker ist wie bei vielen anderen Kinderbüchern.Ich glaube, gerade das hat mich besonders angesprochen. Aber auch die Thematik an sich ist spannend.Das Ende ist traurig-schön. Vor dem Hintergrund des Unglücks nach dem Start des Raumschiffes, rücken die drei Geschwister bzw. die Familie endlich näher zusammen.

I began this year finishing a book that I am sure will end up being one of my favorites of 2020. Erin Entrada Kelly will go down as one of the greatest storytellers of her time. This book will captivate young readers. 20 years from now parents will gift this book to their kids. They will tell them that it was their favorite book they read growing up.We Dream of Space is so darn good.Adding it to my list of awesome 2020 books: https://www.mrcolbysharp.com/2020

I LOVED this book!!! I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into until I heard The Challenger and unfortunately I knew what happened before I read it. Besides that i love how this dealt with a family that sounded so true and marriage and sibling relationships and just the whole dynamic of this family. I love how you got the point of view from each of the 3 children and their thoughts and worries. A wonderful middle grade book A+

Three siblings live life and are changed by the Challenger disaster in January, 1986. I was a college student and returned from class just in time to observe the ill-fated launch on the small B/W set in my dorm room. This is the second book I have read in the past year that features that time period. The first was "Planet Earth Is Blue" by Nicole Pantaleakos. The books are very different and would be valuable read one after the other. What I really liked about this new book by Kelly was the character development of the three kids. Bird, Fitch, and Cash are in a dysfunctional household and through the course of events begin to realize that they can support each other even though the parents are letting them down. A teacher and a coach stand out as positive role models for the kids to lean on while their parents grow up. Included in Kelly's book is a brief explanation of the Challenger and some additional details on the progress of women in the space program. Would make a fabulous read aloud in conjunction with a modern history unit on the 1980's or a science unit on space travel.Thank you to Greenwillow Books and Edelweiss for a DRC in exchange for an honest review.

I ultimately loved this book, but some of it was hard for me. The bickering between the parents felt so genuine, it gave me a bit of PTSD. Kelly gives every character a true and honest place. None of them felt like a cookie cutter insertion.

8 out of 10 We Dream of Space is a novel about The Challenger Space Shuttle Expedition that exploded in 1986, that is told through the eyes of fictional characters. This book switches between the perspective of three different children named Cash, Fitch, and Bird. The three children are all siblings and they have ignorant parents. This book has unique sidelines for each of the children they switch between. Bird, in particular, wants to become a female NASA astronaut. A lot of Bird's section of the book is devoted to her astronomy class, in which all of the students are excited to watch the Challenger Space Shuttle launch. I went into this book knowing nothing about it, but I was well aware of the explosion beforehand so I definitely could predict what was going to happen. Although this is somewhat of a mixture between YA and MG, I think this book would be suitable for a middle-grade audience. This book has great character writing and was very entertaining. It deals with the topic of the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion very well, and very professionally. I could recommend if you're interested in the topic, or if you want your child to learn about it.

Actual Rating: 4.5 StarsThis was a really good story. I wasn't sure exactly what to expect because I didn't know that much going into it, but I ended up really enjoying it. This is the story of three siblings who have basically nothing in common and how things in their lives bring them closer together. I am a sucker for sibling relationships and I loved seeing how their relationship progressed as the story continued. It's woven with themes of space and exploration as it takes place leading up to the Challenger disaster, and I liked how the author tied everything together. It's a very character driven story, which surprised me a little with how much I liked it since I tend to need a good balance between plot driven and character driven, but this worked really well for me. Thank you to the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The digital arc of this book was kindly provided by the publisher via Edelweiss+ website in exchange for an honest review.4,75 starsErin Entrada Kelly has such a huge talent for writing complex and intriguing characters and this novel was no exception. She did a great job of capturing the beginning of adolescence and the confusing feelings and desires that come with it. And all of this was very seamlessly tied to the topic of space exploration and made for a very raw and meaningful story.

This book has so much heart and so much feeling. I wish I could start from scratch and read it all over again.

Richie’s Picks: WE DREAM OF SPACE by Erin Entrada Kelly, Greenwillow, May 2020, 400p., ISBN: 978-0-06-27430-3“Beauty’s only skin deepIt goes just so far ‘causeYou’re only pretty as you feel”--Jefferson Airplane (1971)Happy New Years!Do you remember when Dr. J. ruled the NBA; when everyone played Donkey Kong and hacky-sack, and watched Family Ties? Those of us who are now forty and beyond lived through those Reagan years. And we vividly recall the 1986 Challenger catastrophe. For me, it was half a lifetime ago. I was the bookkeeper for a health food manufacturer, and we had the plant radio tuned to the launch that day. Like the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations of my childhood, living through the Challenger explosion is one of those events that marks my personal history.Late last night after the horns and fireworks, just a couple of hours into this new decade, I reached the end of WE DREAM OF SPACE, a can’t-put-it-down middle school-age tale against which I will now have to measure the rest of my 2020 reading. I will long remember its jaw-dropping portraits of toxic parents. It takes place during the month in which the 1986 Challenger disaster was witnessed by me, my Boomer peers, and millions of American schoolchildren.WE DREAM OF SPACE features the three Thomas siblings who are each in their own separate orbits, each employing coping strategies to survive at home. Cash is resigning himself to being a failure. He’s repeating seventh grade, the same grade in which his younger twin siblings are now enrolled. Bird is an overachieving“good girl” who tries to remain invisible. Fitch, whose birth name is Henry, is an angry kid whose male friends make things worse by mercilessly teasing him about an ungainly female classmate who has been nice to him.“‘Hey, Vern. Hey, Henry.’ She smiled and half waved as she sat down. She looked different today, but Fitch couldn’t figure out why and he didn’t want to spend too much time studying her face for an answer. ‘Did you have a good weekend,’ she asked.He decided to ignore the question. Let Vern answer, since he was such a ladies’ man.‘I certainly did,’ said Vern. ‘What about you, Henry?’Vern kicked the back of his chair.Fitch bounced his knee up and down, up and down.Andrea Blumenthal, who sat in front of Amanda, glanced between him and Amanda and smiled knowingly. It was a smile like Rachel’s. Fitch could practically read her thoughts. You make a cute couple. He mumbled something like ‘yes.’This ‘Henry’ thing was getting out of hand. It really was.An angry buzzing pulsed under his skin.‘My weekend was okay,’ said Amanda, though no one had asked. And now she launched into a breathless description of all she’d done--she went to the mall with her mother, she bought new sneakers, she rented movies--as Fitch faced forward, suddenly mesmerized by Ms. Salonga standing at the classroom door, his knee bouncing up and down and up and down, his skin buzzing, beads of sweat pushing their way out of his neck. He couldn’t really hear anything Amanda was saying, but one word rang like a bell and set his fingertips on fire. Henry, Henry, Henry.‘...do you like movies, Henry?...what do you think, Henry?It was the last ‘Henry,’ the final ‘Henry’ right before the tardy bell, that set him off. Flicked a switch. Set fire to every cell in his body. He shot out of his chair with so much force that his desk shook and wobbled out of place, and he faced her, this Amanda, this girl who had ruined his mornings and now his afternoons, this girl with her round, ruddy cheeks and her big hair, this girl who just had to talk about his red face, who played Skee-Ball and gave him stickers, and he realized now why she looked different--she was wearing makeup, makeup. His red cheeks blazed. He clenched his fists at his sides, took a quick, deep breath, and yelled, with all the rage firing through his body: ‘My name is Fitch, you FAT, STUPID COW! Fitch! If we’re calling each other by our real names, I guess I should call you Chewbacca!’A piece of spittle flew out of his mouth and rested on his chin. He picked up his notebook, the one with the TIE fighter doodle that started it all, and hurled it across the room. It hit one of Ms. Salonga’s bookcases, fluttered open like a butterfly, then fell facedown. Someone screamed--a short, quick scream of shock--and then the bell rang and everything was silent, as if he’d stepped into a deep void in space.”I wish that books like this had been available to me in middle school. Had I been able to read the likes of WE DREAM OF SPACE, I might have felt less alone in my struggles at home and might have been able to recognize and articulate my own family's dysfunction. My high school years and the following decades might have been much happier for me and for those around me. The Thomas parents verbally abuse one another in expletive-laden tirades while repeatedly dressing down the three children for minor transgressions. They never acknowledge their children’s successes, instead scorning and demeaning them. The father is a jerk who sits in front of the TV. The mother, a former cheerleader, projects her own eating disorder onto her perfectly fit daughter, attempting to infect Bird with anxiety about her eating habits.Over the years, a couple of notable books dealing with toxic parenting have had lasting meaning for me. For example, Cynthia Voight’s THE RUNNER (1983), features a nightmare father and climaxes with Abigail Tillerman and a telephone call about her son’s demise. It all still resonates, making it the most memorable book out of my all-time favorite series. I also can’t forget Heather Hoodhood finally reaching the point when her father’s hell leads her to run away from home in Gary Schmidt’s THE WEDNESDAY WARS (2007). A notable aspect of WE DREAM OF SPACE are the chapters in which Bird engages in imaginary internal dialogue with Challenger Mission Specialist Judith Resnik. Bird, a budding scientist who dreams of one day commanding a space flight, feels an intimate connection with the professional female astronaut aboard the Challenger. Having been chosen as one of the students permitted to leave class and watch the Challenger launch, Bird is thereby witness to her hero’s disintegration on live TV. It is Bird’s nihilistic reaction to the tragedy, her inability to make sense of what has happened, that leads her two siblings to come to her rescue and create real family within their crumbled family structureMany tweens will be forever indebted to whoever turns them on to this brave exploration into the psychology of family dynamics and how parents’ dysfunction plays out in their children’s lives. I guarantee that you’ll be hearing a lot about WE DREAM OF SPACE in the coming months.Richie Partington, MLISRichie's Picks http://richiespicks.pbworks.comhttps://www.facebook.com/richiespicks/[email protected]

It's January 1986 and the nation was being geared up for the launch of the space shuttle Challenger, a more than average historical event since it would include schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe as part of the crew. It is an exciting time for Ms. Salonga, science teacher at Park Middle School in Park, Delaware and on January 2, she begins a month long unit called Space Month. This is met with varying degrees of enthusiasm by the three Nelson Thomas siblings, Cash, 13, and twins Bird and Fitch, 12, all of whom have Ms. Salonga's class, though not together. At home, each of the Nelson Thomas siblings have learned to navigate around and out of the dysfunction the exists there. Parents Tammy and Mike constantly bicker with each other. When not doing that, Tammy escapes into a book and Mike continuously watches television. Bird, who is interested in science and engineering, loves to take things apart and put them back together again, carefully writing and illustrating her own manual for each item. She is also obsessed with Space Month and the impending launch and hopes to become an astronaut someday. Fitch is obsessed with playing video games at the local arcade and couldn't care less about the space launch. When an unpopular girl from his class invades his space at the arcade, he loses his temper at school and ends up suspended for a few days. Cash has already been dropped from the basketball team he loved because of low grades and is repeating 7th grade, a fact best friend Brant never stops reminding him about. He breaks his wrist January 1st and spends the month angry and frustrated by the limitations wearing a cast causes. As the lives of the Nelson Thomas siblings begin to spin out of control, and they begin to behave and think more like their parents, Kelly literally builds up the tension day by day in anticipation of the day of the space launch (January 28). Each day is told from the perspective of each sibling, so readers learn about them, their thoughts and activities first hand. Knowing what happened to the Challenger only adds to the feeling of apprehension readers may feel for Bird, Fitch, and Cash. Is their story leading to an explosive end, like the Challenger, an end to Bird's dreams of becoming an astronaut, Cash's desire to be good at something, or Fitch's ability to control his temper? Or will these three siblings discover that they could form the family they have been wanting all along by themselves? *Possible Spoiler Alert* I have never been disappointed with a book by Erin Entrada Kelly. She can craft a story that is compelling from beginning to end, with characters that are realistic and relatable. In We Dream of Space, space is a wonderfully fitting metaphor for what the Nelson Thomas kids are seeking - the space for their dreams to be valued and realized. Readers are not left with a nice tidy ending, but with the ambiguity of possibility. What Bird, Fitch, and Cash will do in the future is entirely up to them and each other.This book is recommended for readers age 9+

I was looking forward to reading this book, especially considering the fact that the three Nelson-Thomas siblings were around the age I was during the historic launch of the Challenger. Cash, Fitch, and Bird are all very different children, growing up together in a rather unhappy home. Cash keeps failing 7th grade and if he keeps this up, he’s going to fall into a grade level below his younger siblings. Fitch is a crazy ball of anger — he struggles to keep himself calm when the littlest things attempt to set him off. And Bird is a thoughtful science geek, constantly dreaming of space. Her goal is to become NASA’s first female shuttle commander, some day. We all know what happened to the Spaceshuttle Challenger, but as the story led up to that fateful day, there was so much hope in what that launch would accomplish. It was incredibly sad to witness Bird’s stunned response to the incident as she began to spiral away from her deepest dreams. But it’s in those shocking moments that family so often jumps in to help us hold it together. Does the Nelson-Thomas family have what it takes to recognize what she needs? There’s so much to discuss in this story. I can’t wait to see what other readers think — particularly those who were in middle school and high school during that historic moment. There were so many pop culture things mentioned in this story that took me right back to that time period. For example: Slimfast, Diet Tab, trading stickers (huge hobby!), hacky sack, ThunderCats TV show, and Miss Pac-Man. This was definitely a walk down memory lane while getting an intimate glimpse into the lives of the Nelson-Thomas family.For more children's literature, middle grade literature, and YA literature reviews, feel free to visit my personal blog at The Miller Memo!!

We Dream of Space was such a great read, I finished it im under 2 days! It is a realistic fiction story that was set in 1986 near the Challenger launch. It would be a good book for anyone who likes space and realistic fiction.

Cash, Fitch, and Bird are siblings who, along with their parents, are on different orbits within their home. The year is 1986 and all three siblings are in 7th grade; Cash was held back once and Fitch and Bird are twins. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas fight incessantly in front of their children and all three children feel lost to some degree. Cash is a poor student who might fail 7th grade for the second time, Fitch has an anger problem he can’t seem to control, and Bird is the responsible one, the glue that holds their family together...barely. Their science teacher engages the class in activities related to the launch of the Challenger space shuttle and Bird is captivated and decides she wants to be a future shuttle commander. When the Challenger explosion occurs, Cash and Fitch strive to support Bird the way she has supported them in the past. Each chapter is one day in the life of the siblings with short vignettes showing each of their day’s experiences. Includes black and white illustrations by the author of each of the teens; more illustrations will be in the finished copy. I loved this heartfelt book about family and tragedy. We Dream of Space is the type of book you hug when you finish and want to give to every child you know.