My nine-year-old girl and eight-year-old boy were highly entertained by this book. The text is long enough so that reading the story aloud lasts about twenty minutes. There is much to discuss and my children had plenty of questions, many that could not wait until the book was finished, so the story forms a great springboard for discussing topics like future space exploration, the possibility of creating space colonies, current timeframe for missions to Mars, and so on. Gorgeous illustrations.