Do you really want to visit Neptune?

This volume in the Do You Really Want to Visit . . . ? series takes one young girl on trip to Neptune—and it's not all that fun. First, she has to pack 12 years of food just to get there, "including gross grown-up food," because by the time she arrives there, she will be a grown-up. Worse, Neptune is a sweltering gas giant with winds of more than 1,200 miles per hour. The girl tries to land on a "slushy ocean of water, ammonia, and methane," but—wouldn't you know it?—her ship melts. Fabbri's blue-hued illustrations marry a retro sensibility with exaggerated cartoon angles and fit nicely with Heos' conversational text. A stopover at Pluto and a few moons finishes off this cautionary tour. Consider this a kinder, younger version of Scholastic's venerable You Wouldn't Want To . . . series. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.

Gr 1–2—Suggesting at best only quick visits, these lighthearted excursions send a diverse cast of young explorers to various solar-system locales to check out landforms, the uniformly hostile atmospheric conditions, and such other features of note as Jupiter's Galilean moons ("the big kahunas"). Though readers will be left with pockets full of specific facts and also vivid impressions of what each destination is like, they will have to guess at the pronunciation of words like "maria" or "Enceladus," and may find the cartoon illustrations, which often dissolve into jumbles of color, less than informative. [Page 34]. (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

"A child astronaut takes an imaginary trip to Neptune and the outer reaches of the solar system, learns about the harsh conditions on the planet, and decides that Earth is a good home after all. Includes solar system diagram, Neptune vs. Earth fact chart, and glossary"--Provided by publisher.

A child astronaut takes an imaginary trip to Neptune and the outer reaches of the solar system, learns about the harsh conditions on the planet, and decides that Earth is a good home after all.