Man on the Moon: a day in the life of Bob

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I really enjoyed this book. As the title suggests, it is about a day in the life of Bob, a man who lives on Earth but works on the Moon. The illustrations are interesting and there are lots of things that could be discussed with the children. In particular, aliens are hidden in every picture but the story says Bob knows “there’s no such thing as aliens.” I think children would find this amusing and would enjoy looking for the aliens in each picture. Award-winning science journalist and space historian Andrew Chaikin has authored books and articles about space exploration and astronomy for more than 25 years. Writer-director and explorer James Cameron (Titanic, Aliens of the Deep) called him “our best historian of the space age.” Chaikins 'A man on the Moon' is a comprehensive and chronological story about the people, the engineering and the politics allied to the completion of John F Kennedy's mission to reach the moon. In terms of the Apollo missions this book is the authoritative masterpiece. The crew of Apollo 15,was involved in a "stamps" scandal,as they tried to make money from their voyage.John Young,commanded Apollo 16,and along with Jim Lovell,was the most travelled of all the astronauts. Aside from explaining the technicalities of trans-lunar injection Chaikin does something more throughout this book. He allows the reader to see beyond the public image of what an astronaut is and understand their inner thoughts. How they felt preparing for each mission, the emotions and thoughts they experienced on the moon and the loss some of them felt once they returned to earth.

I really loved that Chaikin covered the entire Apollo age with an eye towards balance: the details and eccentricities of each particular mission are always held up to the overarching narrative of the Apollo program as a whole, which is super important because each flight builds on the ones that came before it. So, at the end, I feel like I've got a much better understanding of spaceflight history. The chapters on missions like 8, 11, and 13 are obviously longer and more in depth, but I was especially surprised how fascinating the more science focused later missions were! My favorite passage relates the thoughts of Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders after he had just seen and photographed the earth as no human had ever done before – in its entirety, from the distance of the moon: Chaikin is a commentator for National Public Radio's Morning Edition, and has appeared on Good Morning America, Nightline, and the NPR programs Fresh Air and Talk of the Nation. He has been an advisor to NASA on space policy and public communications. Before the moon landings,there is the story of Gemini and the tragedy of Apollo 1,whose crew was killed on the ground in a training accident.There were other astronauts,who were killed in flying accidents,before their space missions. Upcoming works to be published in May 2009 are Voices from the Moon (Viking Studio) featuring excerpts from his conversations with Apollo astronauts, and Mission Control, This is Apollo (Viking Childrens) a book for middle-school readers illustrated with paintings by Apollo moonwalker Alan Bean.Plano author Anastasia Suen has written a remarkable nonfiction children's book about man's first steps on the moon. Reading this book to your child serves as a perfect opportunity to share this historical event with young minds. The language is very appropriate for the targeted 3-8 age range.

Creating your own alien, what colour, how many arms, legs and eyes, are they wearing clothes, what do those look like- are they human clothes or something different?A book that goes very deep into the astronauts' experiences. The focus is on the astronauts and on the Apollo flights. There's not much information about the previous Gemini or Mercury programs and even the progress of Apollo program is only lightly covered between Apollo 1 and 8. There are plenty of technical jargon and talk about things like mascons and breccias but it's only through the pilots and flights why they're covered. Major players of ground crew get some exposure but one might want to have some previous knowledge of the whole space adventure before diving into this book. Even the movie Apollo 13 might be enough to get the idea what's happening. Even though I'm quite familiar of the whole Saturn V and the phases of the flight, I still missed some sort of technical pictures to make it more clear. Also,there was hardly any discussion of the colossal amounts spent to get to the moon,and the environmental impact of the moon missions. A former editor of Sky & Telescope magazine, Chaikin has also been a contributing editor of Popular Science and has written for Newsweek, Air&Space/Smithsonian, World Book Encyclopedia, Scientific American, and other publications. The Blue Peter book of the year 2004 is well written and illustrated by Simon Bartram. Bold and colourful pictures in the story add well to the simple yet humorous tale that Bob journeys on day by day. The fact that the story is ‘a day in the life’ style means it is written in the 3rd person, I think this really adds to the narrative as the reader is able to notice things that Bob does not- such as the aliens.