Caldecott Honor–winning painter Jerry Pinkney and the poetic Dianna Hutts Aston create a moving tribute to the historic Apollo 11 Mission, just in time to commemorate its upcoming fortieth anniversary.
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From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 3—A girl remembers the summer of 1969 and the first moon landing in this lushly illustrated, 40th-anniversary tribute. From her small town of Star, Mae and her family pray for the astronauts, she and her cousins build a homemade "rocket ship," and they all watch the historic moment on television. Pinkney's remarkable graphite, ink, and watercolor paintings evoke both the vastness of space and the intimacy of 1960s family life. Writing in the voice of a nine-year-old African-American girl, Aston is lyrical and sometimes evocative, though some of her narrative choices are overworked. The visual format of the free verses, with every line beginning with a capital letter, is distracting and interferes with the text's natural rhythms. The choice of the name Mae for the character who aspires to be an astronaut may be homage paid to Mae Jemison, and even the name of the fictional town seems to exist just for its metaphorical value. That said, this book offers children a close-up view of an experience that seems quaint today, but that was life-changing in 1969.—Lisa Egly Lehmuller, St. Patrick's Catholic School, Charlotte, NC
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
The narrator of this picture book recalls the first walk on the moon, which she witnessed as a child on her grandparents’ farm. She and her cousins build their own spaceship from scrap wood and metal, but they run inside for the broadcast of Apollo 11’s lunar landing. Later, the family gathers around the television again to watch astronauts step onto the moon. As she tells her grandfather, “If they could go to the moon, / Maybe one day I could too!” Near the story’s end, Grandpa calls the girl “Mae,” a name recalling African American astronaut Mae Jemison. Spaced vertically in phrases like free verse alongside the large illustrations, the text combines dignity and immediacy in a clean, spare telling of events. Pinkney’s evocative artwork, created using graphite, ink, and watercolor, depicts a black family captivated, and perhaps subtly changed, by the moon landing in 1969. A quiet, satisfying tribute to this milestone in human history and its power to inspire others. Preschool-Grade 3. --Carolyn Phelan
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More About the Author
Dianna Hutts Aston is the author of Mama's Wild Child / Papa's Wild Child, When You Were Born(Candlewick), and An Egg is Quiet(Chronicle). She lives in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
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By Ulyyf "Connie" (NYC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Moon Over Star (Hardcover)
Further back than my memories go, there have ALWAYS been footprints on the moon. They were there more than a decade before I was born, so I always sorta took this for granted. There have ALWAYS, to my mind, been footprints on the moon (even though I know there haven't), and there have ALWAYS been space shuttles (even though I know there weren't) and there have ALWAYS been astronauts and so on.For my young nieces, we have ALWAYS known about extra-solar planets (some of which are earth-like!), and we have ALWAYS had a camera on Mars, and Pluto has ALWAYS been something OTHER than a planet. We've always had cell phones and GPS and satellite TV, for that matter, as far as they're concerned. It's hard enough for anybody born after the moon landings, I think, to really *feel* what a big thing that was. How quickly it became history, just another obvious fact that everybody knows! This book does a good job of encapsulating the wonder and amazement that I imagine must have been all around for everybody (well, almost everybody) at the time. Space. It was different then, I guess.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Moon over stars book,
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This review is from: The Moon Over Star (Hardcover)
This book is wonderful and a great addition to our library. i would definitely recommend. the book arrived in perfect condition.
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Dreaming of Space",
This review is from: The Moon Over Star (Hardcover)
The Moon Over the StarsBy: Diana Hutts Aston Pictures by: Jerry Pinkney Coretta Scott King Award Picture book This book was about Apollo 11 landing on the moon this happened back in 1969. To us now that may not seem like such a big deal but back then it was. The book looks at this event in history through the eyes of the kids in the story. The excitement that comes with his part of history is made very apparent in the book. The story also allows us to know what the kids are thinking that they may be as they grow up. The art work in this book is very vivid and detailed, almost telling the story without knowing the words. This book makes the children want have bigger dreams.
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