The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts, Young Readers Edition
Loren Grush with Rebecca Stefoff
Simon & Schuster
Published February 11, 2025
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About The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts, Young Readers Edition
The extraordinary true story of America’s first female astronauts hailed as “suspenseful, meticulously observed, enlightening” by Margot Lee Shetterly, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Figures, now adapted for young readers.
Sally Ride may have been the first US woman in space, but did you know there were five other incredible American women who helped blaze the trail for female astronauts by her side?
When NASA sent astronauts to the moon in the 1960s and 1970s, the agency excluded women from the corps, arguing that only military test pilots—a group women were also aggressively barred from—had the right stuff. But as the 1980s dawned so did new thinking, and six elite women scientists—Sally Ride, Judith Resnik, Anna Lee Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Rhea Seddon—set out to prove they had exactly the right stuff to become the first US women astronauts.
In The Six Young Readers Edition, acclaimed journalist Loren Grush shows how these brilliant and courageous women fought to enter STEM fields they were discouraged from pursuing, endured claustrophobic—and often deeply sexist—media attention, underwent rigorous survival training, and prepared for years to take multi-million-dollar equipment into orbit.
Told with contributions from nearly all the living participants and now adapted for young readers, this book is an inspiring testament to their struggles, accomplishments, and sacrifices and how they built the tools that made the space program run. It’s a legacy that lives on to inspire young people today.
My Review
I started reading The Six the same day the US government directed NASA to remove any mentions of “women in leadership” from their websites. As the biographies of women who’ve pioneered advancements in science disappeared from view, I learned about the first six women astronauts in the US space program and the challenges they overcame.
The book made me feel like I understood each woman’s personality. They each had different ways of dealing with obstacles. Some were more outgoing, and others highly valued their privacy. Grush calls attention to the differences in how the media responded to these six women versus the other men on their teams and even other men doing things for the first time. We’ve seen this in other fields, too, so it wasn’t particularly surprising. I loved how Sally Ride and the others handled themselves in those conversations.
Later in the book, Grush tells the story of the Challenger, which exploded shortly after launch in 1986. That part of the book was the hardest for me to read. Grush’s descriptions of the launch process made me feel like I was there. So when she described the Challenger disaster, that hit hard.
I am so glad I read this book. These are by no means the only stories of incredible things that women have brought to the space program. All of them deserve celebration and remembrance.
I highly recommend The Six for readers interested in the space program, US history, and women in STEM.
Content Notes
Recommended for Ages 12 up.
Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.
Romance/Sexual Content
References to relationships.
Spiritual Content
Judith Resnik gets married in a synagogue where she was confirmed earlier. Her funeral is also held in a synagogue.
Violent Content
References to misogyny and discrimination. For example, an employer pays one woman significantly less than a man with less experience and education for a similar job. At the time, no laws prevented this kind of discrimination.
Drug Content
None.
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