OK, so maybe the science doesn't really ... science quite right.

But that shouldn't stop young readers from enjoying The Woman Who Touched the Sun, a short mythic fable that takes its protagonist, Jo, from her Nebraska farm to the center of the solar system, and back.

The book by Daniel Rirdan is a science fiction short story (just 16 pages long) about a stubborn young woman who builds a brass-and-iron rocket ship in her barn with just a sledgehammer and a welding torch, then pedals it to the sun (with a pitstop on the dark side of Mercury for repairs), using only a slide rule to navigate and a church bell to steal few gallons of liquid sunshine. Why? That's never explained.

Perhaps it's just the doing that matters, not the reason it's done.

The sun, by the way, isn't happy about the situation. It's angry about her presence, and her theft, but its rage fails to dissuade her, and the sun's gravity fails to trap her. She is, after all, the great-granddaughter of a samurai.

"When the star roars in her mind and forbids her to come closer, she steadies herself with a hymn her grandmother sang in Japan," Rirdan says in an email. "Grease, grit, and a little grace -- roots music in rivets, more or less."

Besides its colorful cover, the book contains a single grayscale illustration by Gennadi Erkulis, showing Jo as she strains to raise the upside-down bell full of golden sunlight on a thick railroad chain. She looks fierce in the image, wearing a spacesuit reminiscent of her forebear's suit of padded armor, and the spaceship's interior is a steampunk enthusiast's dream. (It's so good, I immediately wished the book had included a few more illustrations.) The "science" behind her flight is implausible, but the concepts Rirdan proposes -- metal layers that burn away to protect the interior and a liquid cockpit to keep the lone occupant cushioned and cool -- are intriguing all the same.

The Woman Who Touched the Sun is short, punchy and surprisingly graceful. It leaves the readers with questions -- What does Jo want with liquid sunshine? Why is the sun so angry? Does NASA know what she's up to? -- but that's part of the story's charm. I really enjoyed it, and I know just the young reader I'll pass this to next.