Space and technology are generally appealing topics for young readers. The focus on technology makes it a touch niche, but the kid who loves to look at diagrams and the innerworkings of vehicles will dig into this one. The writing is clear and easy to follow.

Pretty much also a history of space science, this book for younger readers – well, the older ones at primary school would be my guess – does well in conveying all the different inventions and vehicles we've needed to get us where we are in our specie's astral timeline. Pretty much we get a short paragraph of introduction to everything, whether that be Saturn V, Soyuz or an EVA spacesuit, and the rest of the double-paged spread is the visuals with suitably detail-packed captions. Most fans of this kind of thing will relish more the later pages, showing things yet to launch, which is where the hiccups came in. Certainly what I saw as a review copy wasn't sure whether it was the 2024 edition or the slightly older version still heralding the James Watt as imminent. If that gets sorted (and the proof-readers double-check the metric-to-imperial conversions as I saw) this will deserve its four stars.