Thanks to NetGalley and Clavis Publishing for the digital review copy.

Mara wants to be a space traveler and explore the universe. When she can’t sleep, she looks up at the sky and imagines her adventures. Tonight she travels to a planet once green with cute, little alien creatures who need her help. The Sun King, they tell her, loved their garden so much he got too close, and now their garden grows smaller as the desert grows larger. They need Mara to convince him to look the other way. She braves the desert and tells the Sun King to stop. Then she explores the water and plays with the alien creatures who live in the ocean. When she returns to shore, she finds the Sun King has retreated to a safer distance and the garden is growing again. Hooray! Mara is their hero.

I really enjoyed this weird, little book. I say weird, but I mean it in a good way. It’s quirky with elements of science fiction and adventure. The art is beautiful and the creatures imaginative. There’s even a cool illustration of Mara’s explorer diary at the end. It’s the perfect read for your own little explorers and could spark imaginative space adventures, discussions about the universe, and even open a discussion about what kinds of alien creatures your kids might meet if they got to travel through space. What kind of world would they find? I personally would love to read some more of Mara’s adventures and hope this develops into a series.

It’s out in just under a month, so keep an eye out for this one on June 16. Pick it up from your local bookstore, or as libraries reopen, request a copy through your library.

An imaginative picture book about Mara who wants to be a space explorer dreams of what she might find. I read this to my nephew and the pictures scared him too much. I don’t think he’ll be alone in this. I understand the intention but the book itself is a bit too old for the target audience,

Name: Mara The Space Traveller
Author: An Leysen
Genre: Children Fiction
Age: +6
Review:
Mara is a young girl who is ever curious about space. She fulfils her wildest dream of becoming an astronaut by travelling to different planet. She then stumbles upon a planet of beautiful garden, where she meet chameleon like creatures and befriends. These aliens friends are afraid of the Sun King. Mara sets out to save her alien friends and drive the Sun King away.
The cover is really beautiful and attracts the reader's attention. Amazing and beautiful illustrations full of colours which delights our heart. This is a hopeful story of fulfilling our wildest, craziest and heartfelt dreams. The protagonist, the courageous and young Mara, full of curiosity teaches us hope, courage and confidence in our dreams.

This doesn't work for me.

The illustrations are lovely, but the story, just doesn't work.

The last part of the book, where the diary explains how she used her bike to build her spaceship, and how she is out in the backyard makes much more sense.

But the story with aliens with nipples (are they mammals?), that is weird. Beautifully drawn, but weird.

Mara goes to an alien planet where she, with the help of some water creatures, saves the local aliens, and then she is their hero. White Savior complex anyone? Besides, she didn't do anything but get the sun king alien upset.

As I said, the diary at the end of the book should have been the whole book. It is funny, and cute, and gets us closer to the way a kid thinks.



Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

I received an electronic ARC from Clavis Publishing through NetGalley.
2.5 stars
Charming story of a young girl who dreams of traveling in space. She flies beyond our galaxy and lands on a beautiful garden planet that is also experiencing serious climate change. With help from the water dwellers, she convinces the Sun King to return to the skies and stop superheating the land.
Beautiful soft color illustrations and a sweet story The text font is much too small for easy reading either as an individual or a family/class read aloud.

I would pick this book up and read it for the illustrations alone! Good message about helping others. I liked that the “aliens” weren’t to scary or vicious. Both my 7 and 3 year old enjoyed it. My only critique is the small font size!

The illustrations in this book are beautifully crafted, the idea is exciting and, as myth, it worked. You start out thinking that Mara is going to follow a more scientific path towards becoming the astronaut of her dreams. When she meets aliens and a sun king, she is the one to save the alien planet or, in truth, to facilitate the saving of the planet by an act of confrontation in the face of power. Now I am beginning to see a representation of another young girl, who had an idea and stood up to those in power. So, perhaps, this story can be an inspiration. Not so much for an aspiring female astronaut but for an aspiring female social-political activist. Did I say that the illustrations are beautiful.

It's a tale of hope and dreams. The illustrations are beautiful. It would work well with ages 5 and up.

This book has beautiful illustrations and I wanted to love it just for those. However, I feel the story with it's nod to mythology is a bit flat. The text was too simple and bland to pair well with the pictures. It's a nice enough story and I like the idea of a girl space traveler helping those in need. It just didn't complement the complexity and lusciousness of the pictures.

A fun, gentle story about exploring and helping others out. Mara’s want to become an astronaut was something I could relate with and I found that the illustrations were expertly drawn, bringing this strange world to life. I loved seeing Mara’s courage in facing the Sun King and the way she employed the water creatures to help her.

This is a cute and short story that is great for reading the kids before bedtime. The story is quite simple but the illustrations make it very beautiful.

This book is not good to read on a kindle, but it does have a great message that children should have the opportunity to read!

**I received a copy of 'Mara the Space Traveler' through NetGalley and Clavis Publishing, in exchange for an honest review**

'Mara the Space Traveler' is a heartfelt story with beautiful illustrations! I enjoyed reading the tale of Mara as she provided assistance to creatures living in a different world. The illustrations were just beautiful to take in, and I loved that the main character is a young girl traveling around different lands, searching for new adventures!

The only drawback was that my digital copy was out of order (the illustrations were jumbled, so the story jumped around from beginning to end), but I was able to get past that to appreciate the rich story of a young girl accomplishing great feats on her own! I would definitely recommend this book as a 'must-read' for young children!

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me a free copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.

A wonderful space adventure about a small girl with big dreams and a big heart.

This is a story about Mara who wants to explore the space and has reached a planet she can't imagine .

The thing is she can only save that planet .

This is an entertaining read for kids and toddlers .

Thank you Netgally and the author for the gifted copy, all thoughts are completely my own.

At first I was taken aback by the beauty of the illustrations. As I was reading I noticed the wording is actually quite complex for a children's book. I really enjoyed this.

The only downfall I can really think of is the font size. I read this in pdf format and a lot of the words were exceptionally tiny. I'm not sure how they hold up in kindle or printed format.

I would definitely recommend this. It basically is just the story of a little girl with big dreams who helps out some new friends. I suppose it could of had an environmental message but that route was not taken by the author.

Here lies another children's picture book mangled by Amazon! I cannot understand at all why any publisher would want to release this in a Kindle version, not even just for review. If there's one thing that Amazon's crappy Kindle conversion process does with utter reliability, it's that it totally mangles anything that's not plain vanilla text. This is one of many reasons I refuse to do business with Amazon. The Kindle version of this was chopped, shredded, julienned, and sliced and diced until the story was out of order and made no sense. Even on a iPad, the images were reliably out of order and sliced in half, and not vertically so they would have at least followed the pages, but horizontally, so it was impossible to read. Some of the text was so small that it was blurred out of legibility.

Fortunately, in both Bluefire Reader and Adobe Digital Editions it looked perfectly fine. Originally published as "Mauro de Ruimtereiziger" by Belgian artist and writer An Leysen, this is now available in English. It's beautifully illustrated (in the non-Kindle versions) and tells the thought adventure of Mara, who travels in a helicopter-like spaceship to a distant planet inhabited by little reptilian creatures of the forest. Their habitat is being threatened by the thoughtless and selfish sun-king who is drying up everything and turning it into desert under the guise of providing sunlight to everyone. Mara manages to defeat him by engaging with the water dwellers, and then she's off to another adventure!

This story was short and gorgeously illustrated, and very charming. I commend it as a worthy read.

Hmmm… This certainly provided the unexpected. It was unexpectedly beautiful, for one – the lush design of every spread was just out of this world, with wonderful craft being put into each and every image. This became a book to pore over – nay, to gloat over. But storywise, when we see a girl go to her rooftop and look at the stars while she can't sleep, it also provided the unexpected. I was certain the bit when these reveries ended, and when we saw the pillow-shaped rocks she ends up on were actually pillows, would turn up at the end. I didn't expect the morals and platitudes of the piece to be reaffirmed by the girl's journal, as if it all might have been true after all… Still, this fantastical piece does have a narrative that's both a strong one and one firmly in the world of dreams, it will appeal to the young seeker of wonder (and the space craft etc are all designed to look appropriate for either gender), and – if it needs repeating – this looks superb.

Being named Mara I knew I had to read this one! The illustrations are absolutely stunning. However, I didn't really love the story and the writing was a bit stilted. The story was imaginative with its heroine being curious and courageous. I would recommend this for children age 5 and above.

Thank you NetGalley and Clavis Publishing for providing this ARC.

I've seen this premise done a number of times (wherein a child envisions themselves as an astronaut and visits faraway worlds), so at this point, a book of this nature really needs to wow me. Unfortunately, this one didn't. While it has lovely illustrations, it misses the opportunity to impart an environmental message, instead resorting to mythology that has no relation to the real world.

One night, Mara imagines herself going into space in her ship. She lands in a garden on a distant planet, where she encounters a group of chameleon-like aliens who tell her that the Sun King--a god-like creature--has turned the rest of the planet into a desert by getting too close and burning everything up. The little aliens are powerless against the Sun King, so Mara goes to confront him. In the process, she gets knocked into a big lake that's filled with a different type of alien. These ones churn up the water, create a giant wave, and chase off the Sun King. Mara is then, for some reason, hailed as a hero (even though it was the water creatures that actually did all the work).

The illustrations are this book's strongest part. I recall enjoying Leysen's work in another book of hers (one where I also wasn't enamoured with the story). It's a shame that the writing side of these books isn't as strong as the aesthetic side; if the two could come together, the books would really be something special.

I'd probably recommend this one to fans of the artist. As a book about imagination and encouraging girls to pursue STEM activities, it doesn't quite work.

Mara the Space Traveler // by An Leysen

From the cover: "A wonderful space adventure about a small girl with big dreams and a big heart."

Mara is a young girl with big dreams: she wants to be a space traveler. One night, her dream finally comes true and she gets to travel in her own spaceship to a once beautiful planet that is now being burnt up due to the sun king coming too close to the garden to admire it. The little wood creatures in the garden ask Mara for help as she is much bigger and therefore stronger than them. Will she be able to save the planet and its creatures or will the sun kind accidentally burn up the entire planet?

This is such an awesome children's book. I really enjoyed reading it. The illustrations by the author are absolutely stunning - she is now one of my favorite children's book illustrators as these are fun for both children and adults. The colors are great and the creatures in the story are very fitting. The story itself moves along nicely with the right amount of details to keep children engaged but it is not too long as to let them get distracted before it is over. This book is a fun way to show them that they can have big dreams and make big changes in the world.