AVAILABLE NOW ON iBOOKS – http://bit.ly/howtopee

For me, the subject of astronomy holds an endless wonder. I was hooked from the moment I first leafed through a thick encyclopaedia with its richly imaginative illustrations of what the surface of Venus might look like. I was hooked from the moment I rushed home from school at lunch time to see astronauts boarding the very first space shuttle.

I stared upwards at that first space shuttle as it passed overhead on the back of a jumbo jet and wondered about the space suits, the zero g, the way life on board must be. Whilst adults wonder at the composition of stars, many children – like I was then – set their sights on the more attainable bits of knowledge.

And in space, these things are no less extraordinary. How to sleep, how to eat, how to pee. These are the things children wonder about. These are their doorways into understanding how space works.

I wrote ‘How To Pee In Zero G’ because these things matter. Young children matter. They learn in the most surprising of ways and stories (and play) are amongst them. Capture their imaginations, stoke their curiosity, let them explore in their own ways and we reach a kind of invisible learning. Sponge-like, they soak up facts and share them with each other as a matter of pride. They turn their naturally brilliant minds to asking questions and we all benefit because they are the future.

If that starts with a child wondering what happens when you take a leak on a space station, then that’s a wonderful thing.

‘How To Pee In Zero G’, I should probably tell you, is a picture book plus. By that I mean it is a book which contains a lovely picture book story but also has pages of facts and interactive bits. Lovely bits.

The story is fun and the facts are woven carefully into the narrative. I wouldn’t want a story to suffer at the expense of forcing knowledge. Each page is narrated, so children of most ages can access the story. But the book contains more. We get to meet the Jetpack Journeys team – a youthful group of explorers whom through three apps and a bunch of comic books, are developing quite individual personalities.

Then we get to see how the International Space Station (ISS) was built in a feat of wonderful, global cooperation. Children can tap to see which country built what and then move on to explore one part of the space station in more detail.

There are, of course, facts about Zero G. What is it? What does it mean to ME? And then there is a map of our Solar System. Much of what Jetpack Journeys has been focused on so far is getting young children to understand, to grasp, our place in the universe. Our Solar System seems like the perfect place to start. There’s so much wonder here. Simply looking at Saturn, or the asteroid belt, or Jupiter! or Earth (we have quite a nice planet too, you know) can trigger that love of space.

One day all this will be theirs. Let’s try to teach them just how precious a responsibility that is.

AVAILABLE NOW ON iBOOKS – http://bit.ly/howtopee

In the meantime, here are some pages!

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