“If you have a dream to do something, you should try your hardest and imagine that you can do it. Even if you are scared.”

I don’t know what I thought an Astronaut would look like, but Commander Chris Hadfield just looked like a normal man, maybe even like a teacher. We listened to him talk about his new book ‘The Darkest Dark.’ It’s the real life story of how, when Chris was a young boy, he was afraid of the dark. But he also wanted to become an astronaut and travel to space. He realised if he wanted to go to space – where it was very very dark- he would have to learn to not be afraid any more.

The story is really good and it is about Chris watching on TV when the first men landed on the moon and from that moment he wanted to be a spaceman. The pictures in the book are lovely too – they were drawn by two brothers called the Fan brothers and they work on their pictures together.

When Chris was on the Space station he played the guitar and sang songs and he sang a song called ‘The Darkest Dark’ which was funny. Chris said if you have a dream to do something, you should try your hardest and imagine that you can do it. Even if you are scared.

I used to be afraid of the dark, and sometimes I still am, but I think I would like to travel to space more than I am afraid of the dark. Chris said ‘You can only see the stars when it is the darkest dark, I love looking at the stars and I even have a telescope in my room.’ Commander Chris Hadfield signed my toy space shuttle and drew an arrow on the front window to show me where he sat. I drew him a picture to say thank you for reading us his book. I watched the Space station go over my house in Bath that night, and thought about the astronauts playing guitar and looking down on us on planet earth.

By Freddie Aston, aged 8.

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