It’s a picture book biography of Robert Goddard, the “Father of US Rocketry.” After reading the subtitle, and knowing about the space race of the 1950s and 60s, I was surprised to learn that Mr. Goddard was born in the 1880s. It shares that because of childhood illness he was to sick to attend a regular school, but he pursued his interest in science via at-home science equipment and a subscription to Scientific American. It describes a variety of failed experiments, but demonstrates how he learned from his failures and persisted in new attempts. There was only one line I found confusing: the book refers to his successful rocket of 1926 as “rocket number four,” even though the preceding pages described his first three attempts, and then goes on to include tell us that “year after year, rocket after rocket…each failure taught Robert something new.” The message of years of persisting through failures is undermined when they suggest it was the fourth try that worked.