From School Library Journal
Grade 4-7-These texts provide concise, yet complete overviews of each scientist's life and work. The easy-to-read layout includes average-quality, captioned, black-and-white photographs. Bankston does a fine job of explaining the often-complicated scientific principles while telling of Goddard's lifetime efforts to build a rocket capable of leaving the earth's atmosphere. Goddard is depicted as a brilliant scientist who was torn between constantly seeking funding for his efforts and hating to have to share the results of his valuable research. Tracy's readable text recounts the life of the geneticist who spent much of her lifetime studying maize in obscurity before becoming one of the few women to be awarded the Nobel Prize. Both volumes contain enough anecdotal information to keep students reading. Those who require more information may want to refer to Edith Fine's Barbara McClintock: Nobel Prize Geneticist (Enslow, 1998).Maren Ostergard, Bellevue Regional Library, WA Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Book Description
There were many visionaries throughout time who have dreamed about rockets. But Robert Goddard built them. A sickly boy, he spent his childhood suffering from pneumonia, bronchitis, and numerous other ailments. Illness held him back for two years in high school, and isolated him from his peers. Not surprisingly, books became his closest companions. When he was a child, he read books by Jules Verne. As a teen, he was inspired by H.G. Wells, whose stories about a martian attack were published in the Boston Post. Goddard believed that someday men would be able to fly into outer space in rockets. So when he grew up, he tested his rockets on rural farms in Massachussetts and in the desert expanses of New Mexico despite doubt and ridicule from others. He refused to listen to the teachers and the scientists who told him the dreams of Verne and Wells were fantasies created to sell books. Goddard worked in almost complete isolation as he developed a liquid-fueled rocket. His inventions would lead a path of discovery to that summer day in 1969 when Neil Armstrong set foot upon another world.

About the Author
Born in Boston, Massachusetts, John Bankston began publishing articles in newspapers and magazines while still a teenager. Since then, he has written over two hundred articles, and contributed chapters to books such as Crimes of Passion and Death Row 2000, which have been sold in bookstores around the world. He has recently written a number of biographies for Mitchell Lane including books on Mandy Moore, Jessica Simpson and Jonas Salk. He currently lives in Los Angeles, California, pursuing a career in the entertainment industry.

FROM THE CRITICS

School Library Journal