This book is nonfiction at its best. An engaging first-person narrative interspersed with all the facts a curious reader needs so they can learn more about the Mars Rover named Curiosity which was launched on 26th November 2011 and after 253 days of space travel Curiosity arrived on the planet Mars which is three hundred and fifty miles away from Earth!
Oversized format, with dramatic black backgrounds and futuristic geometric renderings, make this a good choice for classroom sharing, and text that allows an adult reader to charge ahead with the main information—or to linger over technical details—adds to its flexibility. Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
You can see inside this book here. Curiosity: The story of a Mars Rover was shortlisted for the Klaus Flugge Prize 2018.
Even the title is clever - the innocent little word "a" is so important because this is just one Mars Rover there have been others before and after Curiosity. I love knowing a sixth grader from Kansas - Clara Ma - gave Curiosity his/her name. This book ends with a quote from Clara:
"Curiosity is the passion that drives us through our everyday lives. We have become explorers and scientists with our need to ask questions and to wonder. We will never know everything there is to know, but with our burning curiosity, we have learned so much."
I recently read A Rover's Story. Boy oh boy I wish I had also known about THIS book - it is the perfect companion read. Every Primary library needs BOTH of these books. As I read Curiosity: The story of a Mars Rover I kept nodding my head at all the plot points Jasmine Warga included in her novel - the sterile environment where the rovers were built and tested, the naming of the rover through a nation wide competition, the inclusion of all the cameras and rock testing lab inside the rover and above all the personality of these robots - yes I did say personality!
Here is another book by Markus Motum:
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