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Summer Learning: Reading Without Walls - Stars, Planets, and Space

Escape to new worlds this summer with these fantastic science fiction picks. This is a booklist that features selections for Pre-Readers (0-5), Readers (5-10), Pre-Teens (10-12), Teens (12-17), and Adults (18+). Selected by SJPL Staff.

San José Public Library

50 items

  • Pre-Readers and Readers. A story without words. A child busy reading in a treehouse spots a family who seems to have just arrived on Earth for a picnic. The youngest member of the alien family holds a mind-bendingly strange object. Could…
    Book[East Rutherford, New Jersey] : Minerva, 2023. — J PICTURE BOOK Handy
  • Pre-Readers and Readers. Pablo loves everything outer space, but as he, Violet, and Deepak go through the levels of the Maker Maze to learn about space he keeps making mistakes, and his friends keep correcting him, so he begins to wonder…
    BookNew York : Random House, [2022] — J MAGNIFICENT MAKERS
  • Pre-Readers and Readers. Ada knows that the best place for star-gazing is on the island in Maine where she vacations with her grandparents. By day, she tracks osprey in the trees, paddles a kayak, and hunts for shells. But she's most in…
    BookSomerville, Massachusetts : MIT Kids Press, [2021] — J PICTURE BOOK Lightman
  • Pre-Readers and Readers. When her friends tease her for dreaming of being an astronaut, a young African American girl uses discarded items to make a spaceship for her interstellar journey.
    BookNew York : New York Review of Books, [2021] — J PICTURE BOOK Cain
  • Pre-Readers and Readers. Sadie Sprocket is a girl with a big dream ... to go to Mars! No one has been to Mars (yet!), so of course that's where Sadie sets her sights. She learns everything she can about the planet and space, then assembles…
    BookNew York : Two Lions, [2021] — J PICTURE BOOK Fliess
  • Pre-Readers and Readers. When Jupiter notices a planet circling a far star, he enlists the other planets in our solar system to send a letter, but soon there is a disagreement on which, exactly, is the exoplanet.
    BookNew York : Little, Brown and Company, [2021] — J PICTURE BOOK Underwoo
  • Pre-Readers and Readers. Margot wishes she never had to talk about anything but space ever again. When she wakes up one morning and discovers she can only recite Neil Armstrong's famous speech from the moon landing, Margot realizes she has…
    BookToronto ; Berkeley : Annick Press, 2020. — J PICTURE BOOK Fitzpatr
  • Pre-Readers and Readers. On their second mission to find another habitable planet, the four mutant animals, LaserShark, AstroWolf, SmartHawk, and StinkBug, splash land on the Water Planet, run by some suspiciously friendly clams, who are…
    BookSan Francisco, CA : Chronicle Books, [2020] — J FICTION Scieszka
  • Pre-Readers and Readers. Told in rhyming text, a young girl imagines herself on a mission to Mars with Curiosity, the Mars rover, as she gets ready to go to bed.
    BookWatertown, MA : Charlesbridge, [2020] — J PICTURE BOOK Sayres
  • Readers. When the CatStronauts shuttle launch is delayed, Waffles and Pancake take matters into their own hands and build a spaceship.
    BookNew York : Little, Brown and Company, 2023. — J FICTION WAFFLES AND PANCAKE
  • Readers. Studying the planets at school, Pedro learns fascinating facts about Mars.
    BookNorth Mankato, Minnesota : Picture Window Books, a Capstone imprint, [2021] — J EASY READER Manushki
  • Readers. When Tim Tompkins dreamed of visiting other galaxies, he didn't think he would do it as a captive of an alien, and now he must try to survive and find his way back home.
    BookNew York : Aladdin, 2021. — J SIXTH-GRADE ALIEN
  • Readers. When Stink discovers that Pluto has been downgraded from a planet to a dwarf planet, he launches a campaign in his classroom to restore its status to that of a full-fledged member of the solar system.
    BookSomerville, Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2021. — J PB FICTION McDonald
  • Readers. In The Secret Explorers and the Comet Collision, space expert Roshni leads a mission that's out of this world - literally! With rainforest expert Ollie, she is set the task of fixing the space probe orbiting Jupiter before a…
    BookNew York, New York : DK Publishing, 2020. — J SECRET EXPLORERS
  • Readers and Pre-Teens. Sky's life in Area 51 has been full of surprises. Like the fact that aliens are real - and now one is her best friend! But the biggest surprise yet comes when Sky learns that her grandmother is a secret agent for the…
    BookNew York : Delacorte Press, 2024. — J FICTION Buxbaum
  • Pre-Teens. As eighth grade aboard the PSS 118 comes to an end, Jack and his friends must complete their mission to rescue the rest of humanity from a sinister alien plot.
    BookMinneapolis : Carolrhoda Books, [2023] — J FICTION Levy
  • Pre-Teens. When a virus breaks out and the grown-ups all fall ill, Bell and the other children are the only ones who can help. It's up to Bell--a regular kid in a very different world--to uncover the truth and save his family...and…
    BookNew York : A Yearling Book, 2022. — J PB FICTION Holm
  • Pre-Teens. Returning to Earth after escaping the Martian colony, Mars Patel and his friends, along with genius billionaire Oliver Pruitt, discover that all the adults have mysteriously vanished and, as tensions rise and new mysteries are…
    BookSomerville, Massachusetts : Walker Books, 2022. — J FICTION Chari
  • Pre-Teens. On the first day of summer vacation twelve-year-old Viv Harlow just wants to relax, but when a whole race of aliens escape from the famous Area 51 where her mom works, Viv and her friends will have to gear up, work together, and…
    BookNew York : Penguin Workshop, 2022. — J FICTION Murray
  • Pre-Teens. Leo Fender is no stranger to catastrophe, whether it's the intergalactic war that took his mother's life or the ongoing fight for his own. He's seen his planet plundered, his ship attacked, his father kidnapped, and his brother…
    BookNew York, NY : Walden Pond Press, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2022] — J FICTION Anderson