HELLO, OPPORTUNITY

A salute to the now inactive Mars rover that extended a planned mission of three months into a 15-year odyssey.

Like nearly all the picture-book tributes to various Mars rovers, this one anthropomorphizes its subject—though Li artfully manages to suggest a personality without adding eyes or significantly altering any of the rover’s mechanical parts or features. McDaniel characterizes “Oppy” as a “friend” and lauds the way “she kept going,” mixing general remarks about the rover’s construction, journey, and mission to find evidence that water once flowed on the “little red planet” with quotes that are misleadingly presented as if originally sent in plain language (including the poignant final one in 2018: “My battery is low and it’s getting dark”). Opportunity’s sister rover, Spirit, gets nary a mention until a closing timeline that has outdated information about an upcoming European rover. James McGowan’s Good Night, Oppy! (2021) offers a more careful distinction between real and invented details as well as photos to supplement the illustrations by Graham Carter. In the pictures here, human figures back on Earth are racially diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Warmly affectionate but an also-flew, with better alternatives available.