Here are 78 books that Life on Mars fans have personally recommended if you like
Life on Mars.
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I was born where the sun rose in the prairies and set behind the Rockies. Now I live on the West Coast of Canada. I am a picture bookmaker, and from my recommendations, you might think that I also have a thing for thieves: cupcake thieves, underwear thieves, hat thieves, chicken thieves, pie thieves. But I’m really here for the element of surprise and well-earned laughs in children’s picture books. They say comedy is hard, but comedy in picture books is even harder. These five picks are a great place to start if you like smartly silly picture books with a bit of off-kilter humor and a sense of irony. Bonus points for puns.
This book has so many things going for it, including the inimitable pairing of Escoffier and Di Giacomo (see their other book collaborations). Brief Thief is full of wit, charmingly illustrated, and deliciously fun to read aloud using the voices of a lizard and his conscience. Yes, there is potty humor, but it is arguably more about problem-solving and doing the right thing. Even the title is clever – the lizard was a thief briefly, and it was briefs that he stole. The last two wordless spreads are priceless.
Witty, humorous illustrations of great charm tell this story of conscience and mistaken identity as thoroughly as the book's delightful text. Here a lizard takes the liberty of using what seem to be some old underpants when he runs out of toilet paper. What he doesn't count on is that his own conscience and an outraged rabbit will be watching.
I never actually stopped reading children’s literature. Even as a grown-up, I figured out a way to read picture books every day. After earning a master’s degree in education, I found myself back in the library reading to students. I love reading funny books; they are more engaging and more likely to get kids reading and keep them reading. I love humor and think it is perfect in the shorter format of picture books.
I love the subtle humor in this book. I also love the pattern and rhythm of the dialogue.
When the story circles back to the natural conclusion, I use the characters’ reactions and expressions to have children infer what really happened, who stole the hat, and how the problem was solved.
A bear searches for his missing hat in the bestselling, multiple award-winning picture book debut of Jon Klassen.
In his bestselling debut picture book, the multiple award-winning Jon Klassen, illustrator of This Is Not My Hat and Sam and Dave Dig a Hole, tells the story of a bear who's hat has gone. And he wants it back. Patiently and politely, he asks the animals he comes across, one by one, whether they have seen it. Each animal says no (some more elaborately than others). But just as it he begins to lose hope, lying flat on his back in…
I was born where the sun rose in the prairies and set behind the Rockies. Now I live on the West Coast of Canada. I am a picture bookmaker, and from my recommendations, you might think that I also have a thing for thieves: cupcake thieves, underwear thieves, hat thieves, chicken thieves, pie thieves. But I’m really here for the element of surprise and well-earned laughs in children’s picture books. They say comedy is hard, but comedy in picture books is even harder. These five picks are a great place to start if you like smartly silly picture books with a bit of off-kilter humor and a sense of irony. Bonus points for puns.
You know those car chase movies? Well, this is a picture book version featuring animal chases. The Chicken Thief defies stereotypes in a fun wordless sequence. The reader sees that a fox has stolen a chicken and is being pursued by potential liberators. And the reader might worry that foxes like to eat chickens! Wait for the surprise ending.
I was born where the sun rose in the prairies and set behind the Rockies. Now I live on the West Coast of Canada. I am a picture bookmaker, and from my recommendations, you might think that I also have a thing for thieves: cupcake thieves, underwear thieves, hat thieves, chicken thieves, pie thieves. But I’m really here for the element of surprise and well-earned laughs in children’s picture books. They say comedy is hard, but comedy in picture books is even harder. These five picks are a great place to start if you like smartly silly picture books with a bit of off-kilter humor and a sense of irony. Bonus points for puns.
Can a picture book be any more dramatic! The title! Those eyes! Hoot Owl, Master of Disguise pairs Sean Taylor’s purple prose with Jean Jullien’s graphic characters against a sky, “as black as burnt toast.” Readers meet an owl who thinks that he is clever and stealthy enough to land himself a meal – Rabbit? Mutton? Pigeon? Or simpler fare? Look there – hungry owl schemes, dramatically!
A laugh-out-loud page turner from Sean Taylor with wickedly hilarious graphic art from Jean Jullien.
"This is the funniest picture book I have read in a long time" David Walliams
From masterful storyteller Sean Taylor and exciting, celebrated graphic artist Jean Jullien, comes the laugh-out-loud tale of Hoot Owl. Hoot Owl is no ordinary owl - oh no! - he's a master of disguise! And he will use his expert camouflage powers to trick his unsuspecting prey into succumbing to him! Tiny animals of the night ... beware! But, somehow, Hoot Owl's prey keeps escaping... Hmmm, perhaps he isn't quite…
Life is a complex matter, and so sometimes you need a few aliens, werewolves, and dragons in order to make sense of it. From struggling with one’s career, to finding your identity, to finding forgiveness in myself, I’ve struggled with a lot in life, and these are all things that I tackle in my stories, because in addition to being entertaining, I also believe that what we read should also be insightful.
The Lady Astronaut of Mars takes place in a science fictional world, but like all the best sci-fi, it knows to keep its focus on its characters. There are no hour-long passages about future technologies or scientific theory. Instead it uses its setting to tell a human story about the missed opportunities in life and about growing old. Second chances are rare, and sometimes the decision about what to do isn’t so clear, but The Lady Astronaut of Mars reminded me that more often than not, experiences are worth having.
Thirty years ago, Elma York led the expedition that paved the way to life on Mars. For years she's been longing to go back up there, to once more explore the stars. But there are few opportunities for an aging astronaut, even the famous Lady Astronaut of Mars. When her chance finally comes, it may be too late. Elma must decide whether to stay with her sickening husband in what will surely be the final years of his life, or to have her final adventure and plunge deeper into the well of space.…
I have always been fascinated by science and everything mysterious. I love to read science fiction and mystery stories. I use art and literature to explore reality. Writing or painting allows me to link seemingly unrelated topics together to create my own explanations for why things are the way they appear to be. The biggest things in the universe are replicated on Earth right down to sub-atomic size. I call that life imitating stars. Life is an endless resource found everywhere in the universe, and it's not restricted to just light or heat to grow; it only needs energy.
I liked this book because it's a collection of stories about unrelated people's exploits, real and imagined, as they work together to make their mark in a new frontier.
The stories portray amazing accounts of people ranging from the mundane to the supernatural. It's one of the last stories to describe Mars with a somewhat hospitable climate, and that doesn't matter.
The incredible storytelling of Ray Bradbury makes anything that his characters are doing always believable no matter where they are because he writes from the heart.
The Martian Chronicles, a seminal work in Ray Bradbury's career, whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time's passage, is available from Simon & Schuster for the first time.
In The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury, America’s preeminent storyteller, imagines a place of hope, dreams, and metaphor— of crystal pillars and fossil seas—where a fine dust settles on the great empty cities of a vanished, devastated civilization. Earthmen conquer Mars and then are conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race. In this classic work…
After watching the moon landings as a child, I've long wondered when humans would visit a world beyond the moon and what that would be like. This led me to explore novels that imagine space travel. What's more, I pursued a career in astronomy so I could do my part to explore worlds beyond the Earth. Exploring the solar system and worlds beyond our solar system raises many questions. Some are practical, like how do we get there? Some involve what we'll learn and how the experience of visiting these worlds will change us. The books I recommend explore these themes from several different perspectives.
Set in the near future, this novel imagines that the Americans and Chinese are racing to get to Mars. Meanwhile, a group of teenagers team up with an astronaut forced to retire in disgrace. One of the teens has invented a new type of drive that might just allow them to beat both governments to Mars. The book is fast-paced, fun, and shows how a team can come together to solve a problem, without ignoring the very real dangers of space travel. It also gives a nod to how technology developed for space travel can help us right here on Earth.
“The heart-pounding space race is on . . . in this riveting SF thriller” from the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author of Red Lightning and Rolling Thunder (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
As Chinese and US spacecraft compete to be the first to land on Mars, a former astronaut, his cousin, and four teens from Florida decide to take matters into their own hands. If they can quickly build their own space-worthy ship using scrap metal, appliances, and power tools, they have a chance to come from behind—thanks to an inventive new power source that can propel them to the Red…
My husband/co-author and I are sci-fi nerds and started getting excited about space settlements after writing two space-related chapters in our first book, Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything. We spent 4 years doing research for A City on Mars and ended up with around 35 shelves of space-related books in our bookcases. About 3 of those shelves are books related to life in space, many of which are astronaut memoirs. Here are some of our favorites, picked so they span from the Apollo to the International Space Station eras!
For starters, I recommend everything Mary Roach has ever written. Ever since I read Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers in college, I’ve made sure to grab Roach’s new books the week they’re released. Her self-deprecating sense of humor always cracks me up, and she does such an amazing job of capturing both the science and the culture of the fields she studies.
This book is filled with incredible and fun stories you’ve likely never heard before. Why does the Japanese astronaut selection process include making 1,000 origami cranes? Why were the “walls spattered with blood” in a 1999 space station simulation? Why did the astronauts aboard Apollo 12 spend part of their homeward journey naked? Check out her book to find out!
Space is a world devoid of the things we need to live and thrive: air, gravity, hot showers, fresh produce, privacy, beer. Space exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they take? What happens to you when you can't walk for a year? have sex? smell flowers? What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a space walk? Is it possible for the human body to survive a bailout at 17,000 miles per hour? To answer these questions, space agencies set…
I read every science fiction novel I could get when I was a kid. My worldview was shaped by Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and other SF novelists. I want my readers to feel that same “sense of wonder.” I was fortunate to have been exposed to these big ideas early on because they got me interested in artificial intelligence, space colonization, and Big Science – resulting in my computer science work at NASA-Ames Research Center in the 1980s. My fiction and computer games also draw on these concepts, including my hard SF novels: The Forge of Mars, The Digital Dead (sequel to The Forge of Mars), and Prometheus Road, among others.
After spending a few weeks on the Navajo lands in Northern Arizona in 1988, I wanted to write my book from the holistic and naturalistic perspective of a young Navajo who had worked for NASA and lived off the reservation for several years (loosely based on a friend of mine). As it turned out, Ben Bova got there ahead of me in 1992, sending a Navajo geologist on the first crewed mission to Mars. While he’s there, he makes a discovery that also ties into Navajo culture. I have always appreciated the worldview of the Navajo people, and characters with this perspective offer a different lens for interpreting Martian landscapes and the possibilities of a new frontier that can be settled without being destroyed by human activity.
To the harsh landscape of Sol's fourth planet travel thirteen astronauts, the best scientists from eleven nations, on a history-making voyage into the unknown. The international crew of the Mars mission have spent nine months in space, crossing 100 million kilometres, to reach the last great frontier. Their voyage is fraught with disputes, both personal and political, and their time on Mars limited to 'footprints and flags'; yet while there they will come face-to-face with the most incredible and shocking discovery of all.
I’m a deeply curious person who has always loved the intersections of science and art, and the related intersection of the humanities and technology. I also have a passion for children’s books and have worked as both a writer and an editor, and as a developer of interactive apps and games based on children’s books. My latest book is a collaboration with one of my favorite childhood (and teenage) writing partners, Hena Khan. It’s an adventure where you get to make choices that turn you into a hero or a villain. It’s called Super You: The Power of Flight. I hope you’ll check it out!
For the oldest kids, I find this whole Worst-Case Scenario series to be so excellent! This one was developed with an expert consultant on Martian exploration, so it takes kids through the real choices they would have to make if they traveled to Mars. There is nothing like being in the driver’s seat, making life or death choices, to help someone really learn about a subject. This book will have them so stepped in Mars as they read, their fingertips will be covered in red dust! Well, almost!
In this ultimate adventure, join the youngest crew of astronauts ever to make the trip to Mars! You'll be faced with real dangers and decisions, and your choices will determine your fate on the Red Planet. Will you achieve your mission and return home to Earth safely, successfully earning the title of the youngest astronaut to make it to Mars? Or will you be forced to turn back early? Only you can determine your own fate. There are twenty-two endings to this adventure, but just one will lead to the ultimate success.
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