Did you know that William Pickering went to the same school in New Zealand as Ernest Rutherford (who split the atom)?
Who is William Pickering?
He was a very accomplished scientist who was born in Aotearoa New Zealand, growing up wondering about the stars above us.
Born in 1910, he grew up on a farm and then attended Wellington College. It was there that he first saw Science experiments and learnt how to build radios. When he first looked through a telescope, what he saw was even more wondrous.
After his studies, a move to California launched his trajectory to become an aerospace engineer and The Kiwi Rocket Man.
First he helped the US Navy in WWII, then headed a team working on satellites then rockets, allowing other planets to be explored. Their work was incredibly important for future space travel and landings on the Moon and even Mars.
Awarded honours by many presidents, an emperor and a queen, William Pickering had achieved and answered the questions he wondered about when he first looked through that telescope in New Zealand decades before.
Maria Gill and Alistair Hughes have brought another amazing New Zealander to life in a sumptuously illustrated sophisticated non-fiction picture book.
The research Maria Gill undertakes for each of her titles always shows in her narrative non-fiction, and there is much more to discover about the Kiwi Rocket Man between the pages.
A timeline in the back of the book (as in other titles by this creative duo), shares William Pickering’s extraordinary life.
Author – Maria Gill
Illustrator – Alistair Hughes
Picture Book
Narrative Non-Fiction
Find more books by this NZ Author/Illustrator team here
(2026, Bateman Books, Aotearoa New Zealand, NZ Author, NZ Illustrator, Non-Fiction, Science, Stars, Galaxy, Rockets, Satellites, Space Travel)