Book Review: Reusable Rockets
Katie 
Reusable rockets is all about rockets that are, well, reusable. Space X has one that they are hoping to use again – it has landed safely and is now ready to be reused. This is a really cool concept and SpaceX is doing a lot of really great things with rockets. Maybe that means eventually we’ll be able to travel really fast and live on Mars?
I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.
About the Book
Reusable rockets are rockets that can be launched, recovered, and launched again. Reusable rockets are already in use, and they have been used to supply the International Space Station. Reusing rockets will help bring costs down and open access to space for many more people. Includes glossary, websites, and bibliography for further reading.
This is a fun book with instructions on how to make all your animal favorites out of clay! There are general animals, birds and sealife! Some of the ones I’d love to try and make are the unicorn, panda, koala, whale and dolphin! There are even instructions on how to make accessories so your animals can sport hats and scarfs for the winter! The book includes all the supplies and tools you will need to make your very own menagerie!
This book is part of the “Little People, BIG DREAMS” series and is a board book for younger kids to learn the story of Stephen Hawking. This is a pretty cool way to teach kids about dreaming big – “No matter how difficult life may seem there is always something you can succeed at” is a great message for children – and anyone, really!
Creating Celtic Animal Designs is a book all about tangled knot work. There are birds, hounds, lions, hares, horses, snakes, fish, foxes, bears… While these all look super amazing I fear they are a bit too advanced for my skills. The book includes techniques and materials needed for making your own, but I am not sure that this is a project I’ll be adding to my ever growing to try list any time soon.
108 Stitches is a book from MLB Pitcher Ron Darling, which had some controversy surrounding it with some mentions he made about players on the 1986 Mets team. Unfortunately he was supposed to make a CT appearance promoting this book that I was hoping to attend, but it ended up getting canceled. I thought this book contained a lot of fun and interesting stories about his teammates as well as some stories about his time as an announcer for the game which he has been doing not only for the Mets games on SNY but some playoff games on TBS as well. Most interesting were his stories about Yogi’s buttcrack (I never thought I’d ever type that!), Harvey vs Collins in the World Series and Wilmer crying. The latter two I had watched on TV so it was interesting to get another perspective of these events. While this book took me nearly a year to read, I blame my grad school load and not Ron’s writing style – had I had the time to actually devote to reading this book I am sure I would have finished it much sooner – but the chapters were set up in such a way that it was perfectly find to read one here or there and come back to it much later and still be able to enjoy the full story put forth.
Get Coding 2! Teaches you how to code web-based computer games using HTML and Javascript. It starts with the history of these programs and making games and then goes into making games which get more complicated and bigger as you go along. It also explains how all games are essentially made in the same way they were in the 1980s! I liked that there are some step-by-step instructions in here for beginners and am looking forward to finding the time to trying some of them out!
Dreaming in Code is a book about Ada Lovelace. If you don’t know, Ada was the daughter of the poet Lord Byron and is considered the first computer programmer. (A female? gasp!) Ada found out that she was better at work than motherhood and really enjoyed Math and Science. I am familiar with her names because ADA is a programming language that is still used today at my job and Lovelace is thrown around with the AI debate. It was a lot of fun to learn more about her and how she died with gambling debts and sold the family jewels to pay the bookkeepers. Ada passed away when she was 36 years old but obviously her work in the STEM fields are still showing impacts today.