The Moon Over Star [Hardcover]

Dianna Hutts Aston (Author), Jerry Pinkney (Illustrator)

Book Description

Release date: October 16, 2008 | Age Range: 6 - 8 years

In July 1969, the world witnessed an awe-inspiring historical achievement when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the moon. For the young protagonist of this lyrical and hopeful picture book, that landing is something that inspires her to make one giant step toward all of the possibilities that life has to offer.

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.

Editorial Reviews

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
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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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Product Details

• Age Range: 6 - 8 years
  
• Hardcover: 32 pages
• Publisher: Dial; First Edition edition (October 16, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803731078
• ISBN-13: 978-0803731073
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 0.5 x 11.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #555,743 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars . June 20, 2010

By Ulyyf

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

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.

4.0 out of 5 stars Dream for the Moon May 24, 2012

By Jen

Format:Hardcover

This is definitely a book for children who are interested in Rockets, Space, and the Moon. The pictures are very detailed and gives a realistic feeling to the readers. They are very vivid and depict pictures of a rocket launch, astronauts, family, and the moon. One theme in this book is to dream and to never give up on your dream. The main character, a young girl, tells the story through a first person point of view. She would pretend with her cousins that they were astronauts and have a mock rocket launch in their backyard. I really liked how the author separated each part of the day into their own sections so that they reader would know what was happening at each part of the day. The length of the story tells the events through one day when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon and said, "one step for man, one giant leap for mankind," which remains a famous quote to this day. The grandpa in the story is proud of his granddaughter for dreaming about what she wants to be saying he would be "proud to have an astronaut in the family."

4.0 out of 5 stars Star is the name of the town May 17, 2012

By M. Heiss

Format:Hardcover

Gorgeous illustrations, of course! Jerry Pinkney is unmatched.

This book captures the excitement and possibilities of the space age, while bringing in some sourness.

The children dream about space, construct their own play spaceship, and pray for the astronauts and their children.

The discordant notes come from the presumed holiness of President Kennedy in heaven, and from the grandfather who thinks government should be spending more money for poverty programs.

Human ingenuity pulls people out of poverty and government money keeps people dependent, so I explained that to my kids as I read this.

Gramps in this book ends up being a nice man, just beaten down by worries and cares.