The Man Who Went to the Far Side of the Moon: The Story of Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins
Grade 4-7-Unusual page design and a fine array of memorable, seldom-mentioned details make this an irresistible invitation to travel along with the astronaut who stayed aloft while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. In a narrative interspersed with the crew's r‚sum‚s, handwritten passages from Collins's notes, candid family and mission snapshots, control panel and spacesuit diagrams, lists of personal items that Apollo astronauts brought to the moon, the sometimes-quirky things they left there, and more, Schyffert both humanizes the experience of going into space and captures a sense of what a technical achievement it was and is. (The procedural checklists alone weighed 20 pounds and were referred to by the astronauts as the "fourth passenger.") Closing with notes about the later careers of all three Apollo 11 astronauts, and a final quote from the command module pilot, "We're lucky to have this planet. I know," this book will inspire any child intrigued by the past or future of space exploration to track down Collins's own old-but-still-fresh Flying to the Moon (Farrar, 1994).John Peters, New York Public LibraryCopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.