2022
WISE Score
Space travel is messy, smelly, and weirdly fascinating—Mary Roach gives kids the gross, glorious truth about living off-planet.
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This is how you get a kid obsessed with science. Instead of dry facts about planetary orbits, Roach focuses on the human body in extreme environments. It’s funny, informative, and treats kids like they’re smart enough to handle the 'gross' truth.
If you have a kid who usually gravitates toward Dog Man or Captain Underpants, this is the perfect non-fiction pivot. It uses that same irreverent energy to teach actual physics and biology.
Perfect for middle-grade readers (ages 8–12) who love 'how it works' books and aren't afraid of a little toilet humor. It's the ultimate 'gateway' book for kids who think science is boring.
It models curiosity and intellectual honesty. It doesn't shy away from the messy parts of being human, which makes science feel approachable rather than clinical.
It forces kids to visualize the bizarre physics of space life, from floating vomit to the logistics of a zero-G shower.
It's a non-fiction book about science. The only 'danger' is a high volume of talk about farts and toilets, which is exactly why kids like it.
Mary Roach is a master of 'stealth learning.' Kids think they're reading about gross space facts, but they're actually learning about engineering, biology, and the scientific method.
Mary Roach has a superpower: she can make a 300-page book about cadavers or military science feel like a page-turner. Packing for Mars for Kids is a distilled version of that magic. In 2026, where every kid has a million high-octane digital distractions, a book about the mundane-yet-terrifying logistics of space travel has to work hard to keep their attention. This one does.
From a literacy standpoint, this book is a goldmine for building the language comprehension strands of the reading rope. It introduces high-level vocabulary and complex systems (like life-support engineering) through the lens of something every kid understands: the body. Even if your kid is a struggling reader, reading this to them is a massive win for their background knowledge. They'll learn more about the scientific method from the chapter on space food than they will from a dozen worksheets.
We often sanitize science for children, making it feel like a series of solved problems. Roach does the opposite. She shows the trial and error, the awkward failures, and the 'why did they try that?' moments of space exploration. It makes the scientists at NASA feel like real people rather than untouchable geniuses in lab coats. If your kid is curious about the world (and its smells), this is a must-buy.
The grown-up original: This is the official young readers adaptation of Packing for Mars by Mary Roach — Mary Roach's own retelling, at a length and reading level a middle-schooler can finish. When they close this one and want more, the original is the natural next step.
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