Reaching for the Moon

My 2.5 year old daughter loves this book. I read it to her a few times a week. It is just the right lenght for her to fall asleep.

One of the greatest joys of this parenthood has been watching my four-year-old daughter come to understand that this is a true story, that men actually traveled to the moon and walked on its surface. Even though the moon landings were something I grew up with, the story grows more powerful with each retelling. It is one of her favorites and one of mine as well.

Edwin Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin, Jr. was the second man to walk on the moon when he followed Neil Armstrong on July 16, 1969, while Michael Collins circled the moon in the Apollo 11 spacecraft. In "Reaching for the Moon," Aldrin tells the story of his life that led up to walking on the moon, taking key episodes from his life and presenting them as life lessons to his young readers, such as sinking in a lake because he would not let go of a bucket of rocks he had collected ("I knew that if something was important to you, you had to hold on"). Aldrin also shows how various things in his life foreshadowed what he would do on the moon (e.g., his mother's maiden name was Moon and his first airplane flight was in a small plane painted to look like an eagle). The book follows Aldrin from his childhood and playing sports in school to graduating from West Point and joining the Air Force. After flying combat missions in the Korean War, Aldrin applied to the astronaut program and was not accepted until the second time he tried. The number two also comes up when Aldrin's first space flight was a Gemini mission. The description of the Apollo 11 mission is quite straightforward and Aldrin emphasizes the importance of what they were doing without every talking about how it came to be that he was the second man on the moon instead of the first (the reasoning was actually quite simple: Armstrong was a civilian, Aldrin was still in the military, and the U.S. government did not want a soldier to be the first person on the moon). Everybody remembers Armstrong's first words on the moon, but Aldrin recalls his own apt description of the moon as "Magnificent desolation." Aldrin's narrative ends with the plaque that he and Armstrong left on the moon and ends with a message promoting space exploration to his readers. Aldrin does not touch on the depression and alcoholism he had to contend with after leaving NASA and which he detailed in his autobiography "Return to Earth." But you cannot fault Aldrin for his choice of perspective in this book. In his dedication Aldrin calls the original astronauts explorers of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions to be the first generation of space explorers. The second generation would be those flying shuttle missions to the space station, while the third generation of future space explorers would be the young students who read this book. The paintings in "Reaching for the Moon" are by Wendell Minor, and older readers will note that in the two-page painting of the George Washington Bridge below the bridge on the New York City side is the little red lighthouse of children's book fame.

We Love This Book ! With the space shuttle being on the news so much, my 4 year old daughter became interested in space. We got this book for her and now she wants us to read it every night.

Today, I was priviledged to read, for the first time, the very autographed copy of this book presented to my school library this past Friday from the astronaut himself. Dr. Aldrin is the school namesake and school advocate who visits us from time to time to show his support. For the past several years, my students have gone away from the library disappointed because I didn't have any books written at the elementary level by Buzz Aldrin. No more! Coupled with the outstanding illustrations by Wendell Minor, this personal account of Aldrin from his childhood years to the preparation and completion of that infamous voyage is certainly worth the wait. The informative narrative is written at a level that reaches its target audience of children at elementary school age. Aldrin's mantra is that, if you believe in something strongly enough, and you are willing to dedicate yourself to achieving that goal, then, anything is possible. In this book he effectively conveys this message to the young reader. My special thanks to Mr. Minor for convincing Dr. Aldrin to leave us this special legacy. Of the two first astonauts to walk on the moon, he is the only one to leave his story to children. I am so grateful that he has chosen to do so.