AR: 3.0

Super cute, but I had two issues:

1. Are all the catstronauts male? I wanted to believe Pom Pom or Blanket could be female, but this book is all dialogue so there aren't a lot of pronouns and the illustrations don't clearly convey a gender. UPDATE: Pom Pom is identified as female in book two. Issue somewhat resolved (I'd prefer if half were female, but at least they're not all male).

2. The World's Best Scientist says, "Because the moon is always covered in sunlight, we will be able to constantly collect solar energy [by putting solar panels on the moon].". But that didn't seem right to me. I'm not an astronomer, so I checked NASA's Moon Portal website and it says, "The front and back are alternately lit as the Moon rotates." https://moon.nasa.gov/about/misconceptions/

Otherwise this is delightfully punny and surprisingly similar to the movie Apollo 13. ( )

Adorable! Pom Pom, Blanket, Waffles and Major Meowser are the "CatStronauts" traveling to the moon to save the world from an energy crisis. Colorful images with great cat puns!

A quick and easy read that would appeal to many individuals especially kids. ( )

A harmless little story about an energy crisis causing them to use the moon to create solar paneling facing the sun. Everything happens exactly as it seems like it will and there's not really much of a conflict. The story is very short and very easy for children to understand.

It's not a terribly challenging book for children and hasn't got enough of stuff going on on the pages to keep them entertained, but it can easily have them reading it for an hour or two.

I felt like the book was slightly dampened by the fact that there was a really any new words to be taught to kids, they don't bother to break down anything like for example they could have talked about gravity and explain it a little bit or they could have had other moments where they talk about how batteries work, they have nothing that teaches new words to the children or new things to the children, and I felt like it could have done that.

3.5 stars. ( )

Featured in a blog post at https://booksbeyondbinaries.blog/2020/07/20/chapter-books-whats-good/ (July 20th release) ( )