Lonely Planet is not normally a publisher I turn to for kids books. My go-to series for nonfiction is Doring Kindersley and I have found those to be the best laid out and most interesting to my kids. However, Lonely Planet has made a really good effort at a non fiction book about Outer Space that manages to interest young readers.
The book covers a vast amount of area; training as an astronaut, the solar system, individual planets, black holes, space history, a few experiments, etc. There is quite a bit of humor as well as some excellent photographs and illustrations to accompany them. The book does not go very deep into each specific topic but can work very well as a starting point to trigger a young readers' interest in a particular area.
My one issue is the book is that it tries to do too much and does so in a scattered fashion. There are some pages that are totally disconnected to earlier ones and there is no real flow or sectioning of the information. This is not crucial in a nonfiction text but I found it a little scattered in places.
Besides that, it is an excellent up to date book on space exploration. Even the Rosetta mission that recently deployed the Philae lander on the comet is in this book! Of course, the book was published pre landing so the book doesn't mention that the landing was successful.
While I still prefer books by DK this is an excellent book as well and would make a great gift for a young aspiring astronaut/astronomer.
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