This is a great book for readers to learn about Hispanic women in science. Young girls may be inspired and see themselves in Ellen Ochoa.

The Hispanic Star series for middle grade is a great inspiration for children, especially minority where the focus of this series is.

Ellen Ochoa is a wonderful inspiration, and addition to this series. During her career, she realized that minority children were asking for her appearance at school. Thus, proving the need for such biography series.

However, with this particular biography, the story of Ellen Ochoa feels a bit lost within the whole story which heavily focuses on the story of NASA.

In the first part of the book, there is very little about Ellen. It starts with the setting the time period of the Space Race between Russia and US in the second half of the 20th century. With Ellen’s Mexican heritage, it then talks about Mexican American War and how that resulted in changing the borders between the two countries. Then, comes the NASA story and how they started opening doors for women. Ellen goes to one university, then another, and graduates with PhD. It doesn’t bring any struggles to show children what it takes to achieve such degree.

In the second half of the book, there is a better balance between her story and NASA as it becomes her goal to join them. It includes her training to become an astronaut, her missions to space, and her being the director of Johnson Space Center.

The children who are into science can learn a lot from this book. I’m just not sure about Ellen’s story. Her struggles, even if mentioned in some way, don’t come through in this story. In order to inspire one with another’s story you need to feel what it took to achieve great things.

The storytelling is more of listing facts and explaining terms, rather than being a story of an incredibly inspiring woman. I wished we learned a bit about her childhood. Her story introduces her parents, but then it jumps to Ellen’s time at university, which is very brief. Then, her first work at laboratory in New Mexico, following work for NASA. It feels more of a technical storytelling.