Details
Synopsis
A man remembers his boyhood fascination with the moon and the night mankind first bounced through the dust in the Sea of Tranquillity., An adult narrator reminisces about his childhood fascination with the moon and space exploration. As a boy he read all sorts of books about the moon and about astronauts. He dreamed about the day that astronauts would actually walk on the moon...and then, one night they, did. Color illustrations accompany the text.
| Size | | Height: | 11.0 in | | Width: | 9.8 in | | Thickness: | 0.5 in | | Weight: | 16.0 oz |
Publisher's Notes
First Line: "Years ago there was a little boy who had the solar system on his wall."
Industry Reviews
A British author recounts his boyhood fascination with the moon and with the rocketships and missions that preceded the first lunar landing. Haddon's text lyrically transports readers to that dramatic moment in 1969 when, in living rooms around the world, people saw men roving the moon's landscape. From the boy's dream of ``rocketing across the cold, black miles and landing on crumbly rock'' to the actual event of the two American astronauts ``bouncing through the dust in the Sea of Tranquillity,'' the author's measured tone weaves the aspirations of the heart with history. Full-bleed illustrations, softly textured as if seen through the scrim of time, interpret the text with judicious sentiment. For example, a pretend flag the boy's blue-striped shirt with a red pocket sounds a childlike echo when it appears in the boy's dream, planted on the moon beside the Stars and Stripes. Nostalgia, sweet and convincing, shines through the restraint of both text and illustrations. Ages 4-12. (Sept.)
Lopate
Gr 1-3 A man looks back to his childhood, when he spent hours creating space scrapbooks and gazing at the moon through his father's binoculars, hoping that one day people would land there. He remembers staying up til 3 a.m. the glorious night they did, to watch on TV as Armstrong and Aldrin walked in the Sea of Tranquility's dust. Like Peter Catalanotto, Birmingham paints in a realistic style and often from an intimately close point of view, softening edges and giving the light a bluish cast that mutes the colors appealingly; scenes of a fresh-faced lad in a red-striped shirt alternate with wordless full-spread views of the two spacesuited astronauts in a wide gray landscape joined (as the child drops off to sleep) by a smaller figure. Though Mary Ann Fraser builds a sturdier foundation of facts in One Giant Leap (Holt, 1993), Haddon captures the profound thrill of being witness to the moon landing better than any other picture book; and his concluding reminder that the astronauts' footprints "will still be there tonight, tomorrow night, and every night for millions of years to come" may kindle a response in young readers who think it's all only misty, musty history. John Peters, New York Public Library
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