Which picture books would YOU take into space?

Have you heard of Storytime from Space?

The International Space Station has a range of picture books onboard (five in orbit now; and seven more to be delivered soon).

The astronauts are filming videos of themselves reading aloud, which will be streamed online. You can find two recordings on storytimefromspace.com now and three more are being edited, one of which is in Japanese.

So, which titles are in that bundle of books launching into space later this year?

Two – Mousetronaut and Mousetronaut Goes to Mars – were written by former astronaut Mark Kelly. Mark’s twin brother, Scott, is currently serving on the Space Station!

Another of the books is a ‘personalised’ version of The Incredible Intergalactic Journey Home, created by the UK company Lost My Name as a prize for seven-year-old Roraigh Curran. The book includes satellite views of Roraigh’s town, street and house and an image of stars in the sky spelling out his name.

(As if that book wasn’t cool enough, Roraigh’s competition prize also includes a trip to Cape Canaveral to watch the book’s launch into space!)

All of this has gotten us thinking about which books we’d love to hear read from space.

My Place in Space by Australian team Robin Hirst, Sally Hirst, Roland Harvey and Joe Levine would be a must (a library copy – it’s not available in shops right now). To the astonishment of the bus driver, Henry and Rosie are able to give their complete address, right down to their hemisphere, their planet, their solar system – and beyond…

We think the astronauts would get a giggle out of the pairing of dinosaurs and space adventure in Dinosaur Rocket! and the rhyming antics in The Cow Tripped Over the Moon (just how many attempts did it take for the cow to get over the moon?)

They might struggle to read it aloud, but we’re sure the residents of the Space Station would also enjoy poring over the illustrations in Elys Dolan’s Nuts in Space.

And, for those moments when they’re gazing back at the earth and it seems so very small, what about David J. Smith’s fascinating If the World were a Village? It uses a world-in-miniature approach to tell us about the inhabitants of earth: if the world was a village of just 100 people, 21 people in the village would speak a Chinese dialect, 10 would earn less than two dollars a day, 45 would have a television in their homes …