What's the Fascination with Carl Sagan?
I read a cute little book this week, The Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole by Michelle Cuevas.
This is the story of Stella Rodriguez, a young girl, who, at the beginning of the story, makes a visit to NASA and inadvertently brings home a black hole! She ends up trying to keep him as a pet. She names him "Larry" which is short for "Singularity"--the place of infinite gravity at the center of a black hole. This seems fine and dandy for a while. She does her best to train her pet as any good owner would. Unfortunately, her black hole's appetite begins to grow exponentially and when Larry ends up eating something that Stella can't risk losing, she has to embark on an important adventure with her brother to get it back.
The book is fairly short (only about 200 pages) and is a middle grade book so it was a quick read. I thoroughly enjoyed the playfulness of narrator's voice. As I was reading through, I realized that it reminded me of another book that I read just a few months ago.
A few months ago, I read See You in the Cosmos by Jack Cheng. This book is about Alex Petroski, an eleven-year-old (just like Stella), who is obsessed with space! His goal is to launch his golden iPod into space in a homemade rocket just like Carl Sagan, the scientist, launched his Golden Record on the Voyager spacecraft in 1977. (Stella's story is set in 1977 interestingly enough). The book is a transcript of Alex's recordings on his iPod as he travels from Colorado to New Mexico to Las Vegas to L.A. He meets a lot of different people on the way that help him uncover secrets about his family.
One of my favorite similarities about these two books involve their pets. Alex's most beloved companion in the novel is his dog, named Carl Sagan, after his long time hero. Alex insists on calling his dog by his full name always!
Similarly, besides her pet black hole named Larry, Stella's mother also presents her with a puppy which for most of the book bears the name, A Dog of No Name. Stella fears that if she gives the dog a real name that she will grow too attached. However, after her adventure is over and she feels that she can give the dog a chance, she tells him, "I'm going to call you Sagan. After Carl Sagan of course, the astronomer who chose all the items for the Voyager Golden Record."
I thought, what a funny coincidence that these are two books about 11-year-old adventurous, aspiring astronomers who both have dogs named after the renowned Carl Sagan. They both record their adventures relating to space as they come to terms with their families and their experiences in the world.
My husband is also obsessed with space and so these were fun stories to share with him. Although, he seemed very argumentative about the possibility of someone owning a pet black hole. But this article about tiny black holes seems to disagree with him, saying, "The gravity from these black holes is not very strong; you could add a few thousand of them to the solar system without really changing the planets' orbits. You would need to get within 12 feet of one of these black holes to feel as much gravity as you normally feel here on Earth. So your neighbors could have a pet black hole, and you might not realize it."
Both of them have such playful narrators. Because of its form as a transcript of recordings, personally I think See You in the Cosmos might be more fun to listen to as an audio book! (This link is for a sample from Chapter 1 of the audiobook).
Both were fairly quick reads that I've already recommended to several of my junior high students to enjoy. What a fun set of books to teach kids a little bit about science.
The book is fairly short (only about 200 pages) and is a middle grade book so it was a quick read. I thoroughly enjoyed the playfulness of narrator's voice. As I was reading through, I realized that it reminded me of another book that I read just a few months ago.
A few months ago, I read See You in the Cosmos by Jack Cheng. This book is about Alex Petroski, an eleven-year-old (just like Stella), who is obsessed with space! His goal is to launch his golden iPod into space in a homemade rocket just like Carl Sagan, the scientist, launched his Golden Record on the Voyager spacecraft in 1977. (Stella's story is set in 1977 interestingly enough). The book is a transcript of Alex's recordings on his iPod as he travels from Colorado to New Mexico to Las Vegas to L.A. He meets a lot of different people on the way that help him uncover secrets about his family.
Similarly, besides her pet black hole named Larry, Stella's mother also presents her with a puppy which for most of the book bears the name, A Dog of No Name. Stella fears that if she gives the dog a real name that she will grow too attached. However, after her adventure is over and she feels that she can give the dog a chance, she tells him, "I'm going to call you Sagan. After Carl Sagan of course, the astronomer who chose all the items for the Voyager Golden Record."
I thought, what a funny coincidence that these are two books about 11-year-old adventurous, aspiring astronomers who both have dogs named after the renowned Carl Sagan. They both record their adventures relating to space as they come to terms with their families and their experiences in the world.
My husband is also obsessed with space and so these were fun stories to share with him. Although, he seemed very argumentative about the possibility of someone owning a pet black hole. But this article about tiny black holes seems to disagree with him, saying, "The gravity from these black holes is not very strong; you could add a few thousand of them to the solar system without really changing the planets' orbits. You would need to get within 12 feet of one of these black holes to feel as much gravity as you normally feel here on Earth. So your neighbors could have a pet black hole, and you might not realize it."
Both of them have such playful narrators. Because of its form as a transcript of recordings, personally I think See You in the Cosmos might be more fun to listen to as an audio book! (This link is for a sample from Chapter 1 of the audiobook).
Both were fairly quick reads that I've already recommended to several of my junior high students to enjoy. What a fun set of books to teach kids a little bit about science.
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