If You Decide To Go To The Moon - Hardcover

McNulty, Faith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0590483595 ISBN 13: 9780590483599

Publisher: Scholastic Press, 2005

Synopsis

Two artists at the height of their powers have created a beautiful book with an unforgettable message about the moon and an even more important message about the earth. A publishing event!

"If you decide to go to the moon," writes Faith McNulty, "read this book first. It will tellyou how to get there and what to do after youland. The most important part tells you how to get home. Written in the second person, the text allows the reader to participate in every aspect of the journey, from packing ("don't forget your diary and plenty of food") to liftoff (at first you'll feel heavy; don't worry") to traveling thorugh space (where "the moon glows like a pearl in the black, black sky"). The reader lands at the Sea of Tranquility, the site of the first lunar landing

About this title

About the Authors

Faith McNulty was born in New York City. She attended private schools, and left college after two years to work for The New York Daily News. Because she has a deep interest in animals and their behavior, she wrote about animals for The New Yorker for twenty years. Many of her experiences as an animal writer are the basis for her current writings for children. Faith also worked as a children's book reviewer for The New Yorker magazine from 1979 to 1991. Currently she lives at her farm in Rhode Island and writes children's books.

Steven Kellogg has illustrated more than a hundred books, including IS YOUR MAMA A LLAMA? and THE DAY JIMMY'S BOA ATE THE WASH. He has also retold and illustrated the adventures of tall-tale heroes such as Paul Bunyan, Mike Fink, and Johnny Appleseed. He lives in Essex, New York.

Reviews

Starred Review. Kindergarten-Grade 3–In this lavish picture book, readers accompany a boy on a fascinating excursion to the moon. The lyrical text provides tips on what to pack and describes the distance to be covered. After blastoff, facts about space travel are mingled with descriptions of what the journey might be like: the loneliness, the lack of gravity, and how you might pass the time. After landing, the text warns: Your first step will be difficult. You will rise in the air and leap forward like a kangaroo, but once you learn how, walking will be fun. It also suggests that the moon's lack of sound and color may make it seem like a dream. After viewing the flag left behind by astronauts, it's time to depart. As Earth looms closer, a four-page foldout in a glorious burst of color marks our planet's contrast to the moon's black-and-white shades. These pages depict a variety of wonders: all sorts of animals and landscapes as well as people from different historical periods and locales. The narrative notes, Air and water are Earth's special blessings. We must guard them well. The final pages show the boy returning home. Rich artwork complements the strong text. Kellogg's generous splashes of bright hues in the Earth and shipboard scenes juxtaposed with the somber moonscapes set the appropriate moods. Houston, we have a winner!–DeAnn Tabuchi, San Anselmo Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

*Starred Review* K-Gr. 3. As in her earlier How to Dig a Hole to the Other Side of the World (1979), illustrated by Marc Simont, McNulty offers another mock travel manual for children undertaking a spectacularly improbable journey. In a matter-of-fact, second-person voice, she describes trip preparations, what to expect en route and after disembarking (the tour includes a visit to Apollo 11's landing site), and the thrill of homecoming. The tousle-headed boy cast as readers' surrogate is a vintage Kellogg character, but the artist shows his more experimental side elsewhere with tie-dye-vibrant backdrops, boldly graphic compositional choices, and areas of thickly applied paint to re-create a craggy lunar surface. Whimsical details throughout, whether visual (a cameo by Kellogg and his dog Pinkerton) or textual (beverages in space must be in squeeze bags, lest one produce an "orange juice fog"), will sustain children's interest through meditative reflections on the moonscape's eerie poetry of "silence and stillness." A dramatic four-page foldout celebrating "Earth's special blessings," air and water, marks a safe landing as well as a return to Kellogg's bread-and-butter style--a riotous watercolor panorama teeming with people, animals, and green, growing things. The concluding environmental message should have been left implicit, but the single preachy note won't dampen readers' enthusiasm for the preceding journey. Jennifer Mattson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Scholastic Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0590483595
• ISBN 13: 9780590483599
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Kellogg Steven
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 48