Sally Ride: Life on a Mission

Gr 5–8—Macy's comprehensive, admiring biography offers detail and perspective about Ride's groundbreaking career and contributions. Her coverage of Ride's childhood and education and pioneering career at NASA is similar to that found in dated titles such as Sally Ride: A Space Biography by Barbara Kramer (Enslow, 1998). Macy relates how Ride's educational and sports accomplishments, hard work, and ambition and self-confidence allowed her to become an astronaut and a role model for countless girls. Her section about Ride's work at NASA includes many technical details and is occasionally dry. The strongest part of the book is Macy's treatment of Ride's post-astronaut career as an educator and advocate for increased education and opportunities in the sciences, especially for women. The author praises Ride's refusal to cash in on her post-NASA fame and describes her ceaseless efforts to promote educational and public service projects. She also touches on Ride's personal life, including the posthumous disclosure of a female life partner, putting into the context of Ride's lifelong desire to maintain her privacy and let her work and achievements speak for her. The text is supplemented by an eight-page photo insert, sidebars, and an extensive bibliography that includes materials written about and by Ride. This book has a higher reading level and more detail than Megan Stine's Who Was Sally Ride?? (Penguin, 2013), and it will help readers put her public achievements and contributions and her quiet personal life into perspective.—Mary Mueller, Rolla Public Schools, MO