As an adult, I loved the pictures and laughed at the story. I knew from reading the review here that my 4-year-old son was probably too young for the story and he was. He was scared about Martians coming into the house to take moms and worried about it for the rest of the night. What surprized me was that my 6-year-old son, who I read it to separately, was also scared by the idea of mom-napping and the peril of the humans gasping for air on Mars. Afterward, he told me that he didn't want to hear it ever again. The Martians are colorful and funny-looking, not scary, so I never expected it would be so scary to them.