Ready for Launch by Scott Kelly

READY FOR LAUNCH by Scott Kelly is subtitled “An Astronaut's Lessons for Success on Earth.” Writing for “anyone who has a dream or a goal but isn’t sure they have what it takes to achieve it,” Kelly has chosen ten life lessons (e.g., Diversity is a Force Multiplier) and devotes a chapter to each. For example, he places special emphasis on the positive role of failure: “I believe that everyday human failures …can be one of our greatest opportunities to learn, grow, and succeed. …only when you are willing to risk failure are you aiming high enough.” When I read Kelly’s comments about “how adversity shapes us depends on how we choose to respond to it,” I immediately thought of Randy Pausch ("We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand") and his book, The Last Lecture which, ironically, has a rocket ship on the cover. At just over one-hundred and twenty pages, READY FOR LAUNCH is both entertaining and inspirational; hopefully, it will provide readers with the same sort of motivation that Wolfe’s The Right Stuff gave Kelly. The first astronaut to spend an entire year in space, Kelly has written several other books for adults (Endurance) and children (My Journey to the Stars). He is a prolific writer – I vividly remember his essay “I Spent a Year in Space, and I Have Tips on Isolation to Share” published by The New York Times in March 2020 as the pandemic began. School Library Journal describes READY FOR LAUNCH as an “excellent addition to all library collections” and recommends it for grades 5 and up.