Moonshot: the Flight of Apollo 11

By Brian Floca

Atheneum, 2009. Unpaged. Juvenile Nonfiction

How well I remember, forty years ago, being spitting mad at my father for making us go to church on the night that Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were landing on the moon. Lucky for him (and our domestic [sea of] tranquility) we got home in time to hear Neal Armstrong utter his immortal phrase, and see his booted foot settle into the moon's dust. Brian Floca has perfectly reproduced not only the events of those days, but the spirit in this lovely new picture book. "High above there is the Moon, cold and quiet, no air, no life, but glowing in the sky." As the astronauts approach the moon, it is the earth that glows in the sky, and the contrast of the two, earth and her moon, is the thread that takes the venturers there and back again. Floca's text is spare and evocative; his text exquisite. Best book I have seen, or expect to see, on Apollo 11's voyage to the moon.

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