I just discovered the book Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 by Brian Floca. “Expanded for the 50th Anniversary of the First Moon Landing.” It’s a great picture book, in the non-fiction section of the Children’s Department. Find it in the Pine Bush Area Public library. It is written as if it were a poem. It has all the facts, but it’s poetic.

There’s a family, outside, looking up. There’s a meadow, and up in the sky, the moon, and the text reads, “High above/there is the Moon,/ cold and quiet,/ no air, no life,/but glowing in the sky.” The family appears several times, watching the moon landing on TV, leaning forward, anxious. When the landing is successful, Dad is leaning back, relieved. (Whew!) The book covers a lot. One of the end pages shows the different stages of the Saturn Five Rocket, and how it comes apart when it is supposed to do so. There’s the other thing, “docking,”
when the parts that need to fit together, do so. There’s the lunar landing, and the return to earth, all on the first two pages of the book.

Read the rest of it. “Here below/there are men and women/ plotting new paths and drawing new plans./ They are sewing suits, assembling ships,/ and writing codes for computers.” There are pictures of some of the people who worked on this mission. There is Katherine Johnson, the brilliant mathematician, working at her calculator. (She wrote her autobiography for Middle School readers. Find Reaching for the Moon in the Junior Biography section.) There are the astronauts. “Then Armstrong, Collins, Aldrin/…They go rushing into darkness,/flying toward the Moon,/far away,/ cold and quiet,/ no air, no life,/ but glowing in the sky.” They get there, they land, and Armstrong looks up, and what does he see? “…high above,/there is the Earth/ rushing oceans, racing clouds,/…family, friends and strangers,/…the good and lonely Earth,/ glowing in the sky.” (The picture is remarkable. Brian Floca can both write AND draw.)

“Back to family, /back to friends,/…Back from the Moon,/ they land with a SPLASH!” (Great picture! You have to see this book.) “To warmth, /to light,/ to home at last.” And there’s that family, with the Dad running with his kids, and the moon above them. Terrific book. You’ve got to read Moonshot. It will take you far away, and then bring you back home.