You are the first kid on Mars by Patrick O'Brien - review and interview

You are the first kid on Mars by Patrick O'Brien

2009 is the fortieth anniversary of the first manned mission to land on the moon. Did you know that? Yeah maybe the astounding array of commemorative books tipped you off. We've had books by everyone from Buzz Aldrin to Norman Mailer hit the shelves this year. Many, if not most, of these books have been inspiring and beautiful. Many, if not most, have made me cry.

But while I am fully aware of the importance of the Apollo 11 mission as a concrete example of the highest heights that can be achieved - by man and by mankind - I have wondered just how engaging this story is for young people. My own children are mystified and a little alarmed when I get all choked up reading them Brian Floca's atmospheric and detailed Moonshot or try to explain to them the unique perspective represented by former astronaut Alan Bean's paintings in Mission Control, This is Apollo.

That's why I think Patrick O'Brien's work of "speculative non-fiction" is so important this year. For my kids, and for their friend Alex, who is the model for the kid in the book (disclosure: Pat's family and mine have been friends since our 3rd-grade boys were barely walking, much less traveling the solar system), space travel is not something that happened on a tiny black-and-white TV set in the kitchen forty years ago. Space travel is not even the - let me take a deep breath and try to use an adjective that is not pejorative - somewhat tepid space shuttle program.

Space travel is "huge ships shaped like pine cones with lots of little sonar devices and everyone wears goggles that can switch from night vision to underwater vision to sunglasses!" (I asked.) They think the future will involve "a permanent space colony on the Moon as big as Texas!" "Or maybe at one of the Lagrange points!"

But ok, that's my kids. Not every kid knows that the gravitationally stable Lagrange points are good spots for a space station. But I will argue that my kids are representative of many kids when they think that space travel is part of their future. And Patrick has done our kids a service by writing and illustrating, with his usual blend of meticulous research and stunning art, a reasonably plausible conception of travel to Mars. His journey includes a space elevator up to a geosynchronous orbit point, a nuclear thermal ship that gradually accelerates to 75,000 miles per hour as it covers the 35,000 miles to Mars, and a Mars lander that bombs through the Mars atmosphere before parachutes drop it gently to the dusty red plain.



The friendly, explanatory second-person narration contrasts nicely with the giant grin on the face of the kid as he bounds across the Martian surface. Makes it feel like the book is being narrated by a teacher chaperoning a really good field trip, trying to keep from letting on that she is just as excited as the kids are.

Anyone familiar with O'Brien's previous books (on topics like sailing ships, extinct mammals, knights, and, er, dinosaurs in space) will know that the man researches like a maniac. Marianne Dyson, herself an author of numerous kids' books on space, picked apart every fact presented in You Are the First Kid On Mars when she reviewed the book, but revised her opinion when the author emailed her, addressing her objections and supporting his every phrase. It is really nice to know that the book stands up to that kind of scrutiny.

The artwork in this book was done on a computer, a departure for O'Brien, who, in addition to illustrating his own books, paints large oils of ships under sail. His mastery of the software and techniques involved is impressive - many of the illustrations look like they could be photos, which is important for those kids who want things to be above all else "real".

We had the delightful O'Brien family over for dinner this weekend, and after my husband's excellent fish tacos, I had the chance to ask Pat some questions about the book.

Your Neighborhood Librarian: What was your inspiration for writing You Are the First Kid on Mars?

Patrick O'Brien: My editor, Tim Travaglini, was really into the whole space idea. It was his idea to do a speculative book about going to Mars. My books usually come from my ideas, but this one came from him.

YNL: Was there anything different about writing about future science vs. your usual subjects?

PO: All of my other books are about historic and prehistoric nonfiction subjects. It is fiction, because it hasn't actually happened, but I was treating it as a nonfiction book. The reason that it’s in the second person is I read some books like that as a kid. You will go to the Moon is the one that I remember most clearly. And they had it all wrong, it’s really funny to see all that. Presumably, my stuff will be all wrong.

YNL: What was your research process? Do you regularly read science periodicals like Wired or Scientific American? Or was this a new area for you?

PO: I’ve always been a science guy, I was a biology major in college, but my son is really into space. We watch a lot of space stuff on TV. When Alex was really young, he liked real space more than the fictional movies. We'd watch NOVA together, and his toys were Apollo models, not Star Wars toys. I read a lot about space with him, and on my own.

I used the most up to date, most accurate information that I could find about what it would take to get to Mars. I went through the NASA website, books on space travel.

YNL: Is this your first work created digitally?

PO: This is the first book I illustrated on the computer.

YNL: You're such a good painter though - why did you decide to do it using techniques that are new to you?

PO: Well, for fun, as a change. It was different, and I just thought it was appropriate to the subject matter. The thing about using the computer to do the art, a lot of people who don’t do it think you just push the spaceship button and you get a spaceship. You push the astronaut button, and you get an astronaut, and then you make it do what you want. But you still have to draw it, you still have to paint it. It’s just one more medium. When they invented watercolors, it didn’t put the oil painters out of business.

But there are advantages. You can make infinite changes - with watercolors, pretty much once it's down, it's there. You can make a certain amount of changes with oils, but with the computer, you can keep adjusting it until it's just what you want. I used Corel Painter X and a tablet, so it’s a lot like painting. It wasn't hard to learn.

YNL: Did you find it hard to stop making changes? Was it tempting to keep touching it, trying out variations?

PO: No. A little. I know what I’m going for, I have a picture in my mind, and when I've made that, it’s done.

There you go, folks. I made it, it's done. You will go to the Moon was, not surprisingly, on my shelf as a kid too.

Dragonbreath by Ursula Vernon - review

Dragonbreath by Ursula Vernon
It's possible that my opinion of this book has been influenced by the appearance in my bed this morning (at, possibly, 7am, I don't know, I didn't have my glasses on yet), of a seven-year-old who wasn't interested in it when I suggested it to him yesterday at the library, but who had apparently woken up, read the whole book, and now needed to synopsize it for me, read the funniest passages out loud, and tell me that he needs the next book in the series RIGHT NOW. He could barely get the words out for laughing.

After we kicked him out (my saintly husband: "Let Mommy sleep, ok? Go read something else."), I fell back to sleep and dreamed about pudgy animated dragon pirates. Ursula Vernon, get your agent on the phone with Noggin. Danny Dragonbreath is good animated.

So. Danny Dragonbreath is the only semi-mythological creature in a school full of non-mythic reptiles and amphibians. He gets a little picked-on for this, but his is an upbeat, enthusiastic semi-mythological 5th-grade spirit, and he doesn't let that bully Big Eddy the Komodo dragon get him down. His best friend Wendell is (predictably) a more cautious, intellectual type, and in the way of mismatched best friend pairs everywhere, Danny has to cajole Wendell into assisting him in his pursuit of unorthodox solutions to common problems.

In this instance, the problem is a research paper on the ocean, a subject that Danny knows nothing about. Danny's solution? A visit to Cousin Edward the sea serpent, who takes the gung-ho Danny and freaked-out Wendell on an undersea tour. They explore a coral reef, a sunken ship, and a deep-sea trench. Along the way, sneaky Ursula Vernon finagles interesting facts about sea creatures and ocean phenomena into the adventure.

But it's the snarkalicious writing that will keep my seven-year-old, and other kids who appreciate funny (I'm thinking it might appeal to Diary of a Wimpy Kid devotees, if I can get them past the dragon thing) coming back for more. In a sidebar, Vernon writes, "A school of potato salad can skeletonize a cow in under two weeks, assuming that the cow doesn't get bored and move."

Our library system has Dragonbreath filed as a graphic novel, but it's not. It's one of those hybrids, something like The Invention of Hugo Cabret, with pages of panels carrying the action in some places and pages of text doing the bulk of the work. There could be more graphic passages, I have to say. Ursula Vernon's drawing style is extremely nice - full-on grownup quality work, with a strong line quality and bold shading that highlights each panel's central idea. Think Owly.

Such high contrast sometimes makes a comic look ominous and bleak (Dark Knight Returns, Grendel), but in this case, the choice of grass green as a highlight color keeps that from happening, and it's a technique that is particularly appropriate and effective in the undersea scenes. The vertical panels that show the sinuous Edward diving or rising to the surface are unusually lovely. Page layouts are varied and interesting, but still quite simple and easy to follow.

In sum: . I've been looking for a Babymouse for boys for a long time, and I think Dragonbreath is it - snappy, giggleworthy text and strong, coherent graphic passages telling a fun, friendly, exciting story with just the right balance of realism and fantasy. I'm with Mao - we're waiting for Dragonbreath: Attack of the Ninja Frogs with bated breath!

The Moon over Star by Dianna Hutts Aston, pictures by Jerry Pinkney - review

The Moon over Star by Dianna Hutts Aston, pictures by Jerry Pinkney
Give me a second. I am a mess. Let me get a Kleenex.

Wow.

I was four years old when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon (while their shorter, funnier counterpart, Michael Collins, circled the block in the car), and I still feel privileged to have witnessed that moment. Hell, my husband and I named a cat Buzz Aldrin, we're still so impressed with this human feat. So I guess I should have expected that this book would give me goosebumps.

But my goodness - this is one damn fine book. I summarized it to a jury of my (younger) peers later in the evening, and just my synopsis made them all choke up.

Dianna Hutts Aston gives us that day in 1969 as experienced by an eight-year-old girl (who may or may not be Mae Jemison) on her grandfather's farm in a town named Star. Mae and her cousins pray for the astronauts in church in the morning and build a rocket ship out of scraps from the barn in the afternoon. Mae is the oldest, so she gets to pretend to be Armstrong as they count down to liftoff together. Later, they watch Cronkite on TV and hear those immortal phrases, "The Eagle has landed," and even later, "One small step for man..."

In between times, Mae thinks about the astronauts' children and whether they are proud but also scared, and about President Kennedy, who did not live to see this dream attained, and about her own grandfather, who does not approve of the space program. "Why spend all that money to go to the moon when there's so many folks in need right here on Earth?"

When I googled this title, I learned that President Obama read this book aloud to a group of second graders at a charter school in D.C. two weeks into his presidency. Well. If I wasn't impressed by this man before (and I was), I am now. If I tried to read this thing aloud, I do not think I could manage it. Which, given the class of second graders I know best, would still be a fine thing, because they would want to know why, and I would have the opportunity to tell them.

Or I might just show them the back cover of this book, with Jerry Pinkney's freakin' masterpiece of a full moon, and then open to his two-page spread of the Apollo 11 rocket clearing the launch pad. When I see that image, I always think of my dad explaining to me, "The U.S. space program was miserable in the beginning. People used to say, 'Our rockets always blow up.'" (Tom Wolfe quoted the exact same line in The Right Stuff.)

But hundreds, thousands of people believed that we could do it, and in the end, that rocket didn't blow up, and those astronauts had the courage to strap themselves into it, and we went to the damn moon. And if all that can happen, and if Jerry Pinkney can paint the Moon just as beautifully if not more beautifully than he has always painted people and trees and birds... well, then, an eight-year-old black girl in the town of Star can do anything with her life, and that's the message of this book, and now I'm snifflin' again.

National Geographic Investigates: The Ancient Celts by Jen Brown - review

National Geographic Investigates: The Ancient Celts by Jen Brown

In beautiful photographs and well-written text, this entry in the very readable National Geographic Investigates series makes a thorough presentation of the most up-to-date knowledge about this ancient European culture, from its origins in 800 BC through 500 AD, and the echoes of Celtic traditions in our lives today.

Aerial photos, timelines, informative sidebars, and National Geographic's famous maps augment text that asks and answers interesting questions ("Why did the Celts make human sacrifices?" "What happened when the Romans came?"). Rigorous in its distinction between theory, supposition, and proven fact, the book features a minimum of illustration, in favor of photos of artifacts, sites, and physical remains - including close-ups of Celtic "bog people" showing details such as manicured fingernails and hairdos. Scale is scrupulously noted for all objects and structures in both English and metric units.

Numerous explanations of techniques and processes - both those of the Celts and those employed by archaeologists - inject an element of how-to, a canny addition that will hook the attention of the reader fascinated by how things work and how we figure things out.

Previous books about the Celts for this age group have concentrated on the Celtic presence in the British Isles, or have focused on Celtic myths or daily life. In sixty-plus pages, Ancient Celts is a balanced, scientific account that doesn't stint on the mummified remains. Sure to appeal to a broad range of learners.

Wolfsnail by Sarah C. Campbell - review

Wolfsnail by Sarah C. Campbell
This should totally be the new series by Erin Hunter.

Grayshell and Slimie have finally found TrembleFoot's old territory under the composter, but Grayshell fears that all of his/her Broodmates have been killed or captured by Beakfaces. Slimie insists that they keep looking, and an old friend helps point the two snails on the path that the Broods followed many moons ago. S-l-o-w-l-y they continue their quest.

Right? I mean, anybody but me sick of those cats? No? Huh. I'm going to get a lot of hate mail, aren't I. Oh well.

Ok so Wolfsnail is not fiction. There will not be multiple sequelae. Wolfsnail: the Sliming, Part 4: The Robins Return: Red-breasted Death from Above is not in the offing. But I adore this book. It looks like your standard 32-page species monograph, and it is, really. Your first- or second-grader will get a short but pithy glimpse into the habits of the predatory wolfsnail, which eats other snails and slugs. Two sentences and one big photograph per page. But the prose! It's the music from Jaws:

"It climbs up.
Does the wolfsnail bite into a crisp hosta leaf?
No. Most land snails, such as this one, eat plants.
The wolfsnail eats meat."

Dun-DUN!

"The wolfsnail turns to follow the trail.
It moves faster than other snails."

Dun-dun dun-dun!

And it's not like the author is being facetious. From the Acknowledgments we learn that Sarah C. Campbell is a wolfsnail True Believer - she keeps the little buggers, and she and her husband took all the (very beautiful) pictures. She has clearly spent many, many hours observing them, in the process becoming fascinated as only an invertebrate can fascinate.

Why is that? People will watch an ant farm for ages. Beekeepers are maniacs. Really. Maniacs. No exceptions. And have you ever known a marine biologist who could look at any other animal once he or she had spent some time with an octopus? I know I haven't.

So let's hear it for the wolfsnail, freaky little hermaphroditic carnivore. He/she has already claimed one children's book author and her husband, and now one reviewer and her husband - read this book and join us.

Join us.

How Monkeys Make Chocolate: Unlocking the mysteries of the rainforest by Adrian Forsyth - review

How Monkeys Make Chocolate: Unlocking the mysteries of the rainforest by Adrian Forsyth
What an interesting book! Forsyth, a senior biodiversity researcher at the National Museum of Natural History, explores relationships between animals and plants in rain forests throughout the world. He draws examples from his own travels and experiences, doesn't dumb down the botany for the young reader, and contextualizes his facts in a friendly, accessible way. The book even uses some of Forsyth's own photos.

What a shame about the design, though. Textbook-y and choppy, the design actually makes the photos and text appear to be generic, like placeholders. You'd have to be pretty committed to even give it a try.

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow - review

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
Marcus is the kind of kid whose best friend gets him a biography of Alan Turing for his fourteenth birthday. A boy who spoofs gait-recognition software by putting gravel in his shoes. He's the kid who hacked the spyware-infested and adware-infested laptops the school system provides. Smart and sneaky, Marcus might as well have been born with a Question Authority bumper sticker slapped across his butt. Not the kind of kid to take five days of detention and questioning (aka imprisonment and browbeating) by the Department of Homeland Security lying down.

Cory Doctorow weaves a lot of interesting set pieces, e-culture references, and technical explanations into this tale of cyber disobedience and the power of ideas. I guarantee that any reader will learn something new. You may know what a Sailor Moon outfit looks like, and you may understand how public keys work and how to make them. You may have read about how to make a video camera sniffer using a toilet paper tube on Instructables (and in fact, that Instructable may have been written by Marcus), but... how's your Bayesian analysis? Did you know that your digital camera "signs" each shot with unique metadata - meaning your every capture can be traced back to your machine? And did you know that Kerouac wrote On the Road on a big long scroll of paper?

Well, ok, everyone knows that last one.

Little Brother is a terrific adventure. Its protagonist is resourceful and brilliant but also thoughtful and real. But what really distinguishes this book is the voice of Cory Doctorow, patiently and passionately explaining why privacy is important, why dissent is crucial to democracy, and what can happen when we forget that. Oh, and he also slags Microsoft without hesitation every chance he gets - giving the book that whiff of honesty that teens crave.

Like Halting State for teens. Like So Yesterday for geeks. Like 1984 for today (and with a happier ending). And when they're finished with this one, start 'em on Gibson and Philip K. Dick.

to be like the SUN by Susan Marie Swanson and Margaret Chodos-Irvine - review

to be like the SUN by Susan Marie Swanson and Margaret Chodos-Irvine
I love picture books about plants and gardening. This time of year, I always like to bust them out. Some of my favorites:

Eddie's Garden and How to Make Things Grow

How Groundhog's Garden Grew

Tippy-Tippy-Tippy, Hide!

Bud

The Gardener

A Seed Is Sleepy

And now, To Be Like the Sun. I love the bold, textured illustrations, "created using a variety of nontraditional printmaking techniques and materials." I'm not positive, but I think that may mean that a lot of tissue paper and maybe even a couple of potatoes gave up their chance at happiness for this book. "This is a good death," as Chiwitel Ejiofor says in Serenity.

And I adore the prose. I plant a lot of seeds, and I'm 42 years old and NOT prone to spiritual thoughts, but when I push a seed in the ground I am almost always dubious that such a small thing can suck up a bunch of water and minerals and make a whole plant. It is one of life's enduring sources of amazement for me.

The little girl in this book, planting a sunflower seed, thinks to herself:

Hello, little seed,
striped gray seed.
Do you really know everything
about sunflowers?

Yup, that sums it up for me. She continues observing the sunflower through the seasons, as it grows, develops a bud, creates its own seeds and sheds them. In the winter we see that she has saved some seeds and will plant them next year.

It's the nearest thing to a miracle that I know, and now I have this book, to explain that to my kids better than I could.

Arabella Miller's Tiny Caterpillar by Clare Jarrett - review

Arabella Miller's Tiny Caterpillar by Clare Jarrett
A book about what now? The life cycle of a butterfly you say? How novel!

No, don't listen to me, I'm totally being a crank today. If you have room in your heart or on your shelf for one more butterfly life cycle book, or if, for some reason, you don't have one yet, you should definitely buy this one.

The art is simple and clear, with a springy palette that suits the subject. The text rhymes, and is set to a somewhat unusual meter. I like it - it makes for kind of a halting read, mimicing the caterpillar's locomotion. I also like that the book focuses on Arabella's observation of her little friend without feeling like a textbook.

When is a planet not a planet? The story of Pluto, by Elaine Scott - review

When is a Planet Not a Planet? The Story of Pluto, by Elaine Scott
Made Molly read this one. There she be, above, reading about Pluto. Also my husband read it to our kids. It's good. Lots of text, but it's all interesting. There's history, from Lascaux onward, illustrated with large, clear reproductions. There's a good explanation of the hypothesis - theory - law continuum. There are personalities, there are marvelous artists' conceptions and photos from deep space.

Oddly, there is no Neil DeGrasse Tyson, but the book doesn't suffer for it.

Close to the wind: The Beaufort Scale by Peter Malone - review

Lest anyone think that Pink Me opinion is one-sided, here is evidence that I make my friends read books I like, so that I can get my opinions validated. Of course, if they don't agree with me, I cut them off forever. No beer for you!

So, my friend Aimee here (and to a certain extent, Juicy Boy on her lap, who is really too young for this book), as well as a whole Friday porch-load of other readers, fully endorse Close to the Wind: The Beaufort Scale as one spectacular work of juvenile non-fiction.

I have something of a bias toward non-fiction, it's true. That's partly why I made Aimee, Molly, and Bob all read this book. But come on! Close to the Wind has it all: a gripping plot! Factual information presented in a way that is easy to grasp! Characters! Beautiful, detailed illustration! A map! A glossary! References! A biographical note! And all of it interesting!

The nominal purpose of this book is to illustrate the Beaufort Scale, a standardized way to measure the force of the wind. Developed in 1805, before the invention of instruments to measure wind speed, Beaufort's scale is based on observation, and therefore can be explained easily to almost anyone. At Beaufort 2, leaves rustle. Got it.

But Malone goes much further. He invents a 12-year-old midshipman, William, aboard a British Navy ship in 1805. Using William's letters home to his sister and gorgeous illustrations that employ unexpected points of view, (much like Brian Floca's Lightship, recently reviewed here) he gives the Beaufort Scale context and consequence. When the ship survives a hurricane (Beaufort 12) and hobbles into harbor at the end of the book, we all breathe a sigh of relief for William and the rest of the crew.

Recommended for any reader.

George's Secret Key to the Universe by Stephen and Lucy Hawking - review

I read this book some time ago. December it was, yes, December 27. During jury duty. They showed a Queen Latifah movie in the jury waiting room. Also half of The Devil Wears Prada, and ever since then, I have had this nagging need to find out how it ended. Not enough to Netflix it though. I have a feeling that post-transformation, it all goes downhill and probably comes to conclusions that I would Not Agree With, based on assertions that are ridiculous.

Anyway, the book. I had some problems with it, and I wasn't going to review it, because, while I have in the past been known to boldly trash books that everyone else likes and call down the wrath of authors who actually go out looking for their reviews, well... why pick on Stephen Hawking?

But just in the past week, two different friends have mentioned that they listened to it on audio and just loved it.

Now, George's Secret Key to the Universe, I have to say, does a very bold thing, integrating astronomy and physics into the story - and not just as sidebar information, though there is plenty of that, plus an insert of full-color photos just as if it were a Karrine Steffans memoir. (Everything in these pictures is real, though, unlike those pictures of Ms. Steffans with her shirt off.) (I approve of sidebars, by the way. When I was a kid, they were just starting to appear in textbooks, and, when available, they were all I read.)

In this book, however, George goes on adventures in space and solves problems, all the while learning about and using elementary astrophysics. Given the disastrous state of science knowledge in this country, I would really like to be able to thrust this book into the air and yell, "Science! Story! No reason they can't go together!"

But. God, it really pains me to pick on this. Ok. George lives with his parents in a somewhat ramshackle house in the suburbs. His parents are major crunchies, environmentalists who seek to live as much 'off the grid' as they can. Candles, nettle tea, home-grown food. Fine so far. But the parents take the very unusual stance that technology, because it enables consumption, is bad. They won't have a computer in the house and are suspicious of science.

I have two problems with this. First of all, I know a LOT of environmentally-conscious people, in all shades, from old-fashioned communal hippie to new-fangled Prius-driving vegan. And I'm not sure I've ever met a single one that was anti-technology, or who denied that science can help decrease our mis-use of natural resources. Solar power, anyone?

Secondly, I feel like the authors are setting up a conflict that doesn't have to be there. George is going to get in trouble, because this is a children's book, but does part of the trouble he's in have to be for defying his parents? An evil villain is after him, and he has to avoid being sucked into a black hole at one point. There's no reason his parents couldn't be supportive. Except for, oh yes, they're retarded hippies who hate computers.

There is a rapprochement at the end of the book between the parents and the scientist next door who has been mentoring George in his explorations of space and science. Both factions come together at an environmental rally, and the parents see the error of their reasoning. Well, of course it's erroneous reasoning! Nobody actually thinks like that! Oh, hell. Maybe they do in England. I'm probably just making a big deal out of nothing.

But there's one other thing: George's "secret key to the universe" is the ENTER key on a sentient laptop named Cosmos. Does that bother anybody but me?

Hello?

Winston of Churchill: One bear's battle against global warming, by Jean Davies Okimoto, illustrated by Jeremiah Trammell - review

Winston of Churchill: One bear's battle against global warming, by Jean Davies Okimoto, illustrated by Jeremiah Trammell
Ohhhh-kay. Really nice illustrations. Super message. Nice illustrated summary of the whys and hows of global warming. Friendly-looking polar bears.

But I wonder if all the references to Winston Churchill, including a brief subplot about his cigar, as well as direct quotes from his most famous speeches, will baffle children enough to make them lose interest in what is otherwise a nice story about an important issue. Sure, there's explanatory back-matter, but if you've already lost 'em, what good is back-matter?

The issue is important enough to many parents that they will read this book to their kids and explain every blessed word if they have to, and I will take it home myself, but we'll see.

Where in the wild? Ear-tickling poems by David M. Schwartz and Yael Schy, eye-tricking photos by Dwight Kuhn - review

... and I want to thank you guys for that extremely long cut-line. Man! I didn't even put in the subtitle, "Camouflaged creatures concealed... and revealed."

Given all that up-front verbage, you know I wouldn't even bother to review this book if it weren't really neat. So, I guess you can infer... that... it is. Hm. Not setting this up too well, am I.

Ok. Each two-page spread is really a three-page spread, with a page-size fold-out. On the left we have a sweet (though, if I may, not terribly inspired) poem, and on the right there is a beautiful full-bleed nature photo. If you look closely, you will find the naturally camouflaged animal that is hiding in plain sight. If you can't see the animal, the page lifts away to reveal the same photo with everything but the animal greyed-out. The fold-out also reveals text about the animal, written at about a third-grade level.

Realistically, these fold-outs are too fragile for our school library, and I don't know how long it'll last at the public library. Our copy hasn't circulated even once, and there are already unintentional creases where it has been closed hurriedly. But Where in the Wild? would make a terrific gift for any kid who likes animals or puzzles.

The Man Who Went to the Far Side of the Moon: The Story of Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins, by Bea Uusma Schyffert

I was a whole 5 pages into this book before my eyes misted over. It's about Michael Collins, the guy who stayed in the spacecraft Columbia while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin went down and walked around on the moon.

Michael Collins was surely one of the most appealing characters in Opie's documentary about the astronauts, In the Shadow of the Moon. He had a great sense of humor and a staggering sense of perspective. Possibly the kind of perspective you only get from having been to the dark side of the moon FOURTEEN TIMES.

This book really nails it. It is a satisfying combination of minutiae (Buzz Aldrin's mother's maiden name was Moon), personal revelation (a note Collins scribbled to himself from the dark side, describing the immensity of his aloneness, reveals a facility with language and a self-awareness I would not have expected from a clean-cut astronaut), and quantitative information (700 switches, 20 pounds of checklists, 11 minutes 42 seconds from launch pad to space, Collins's salary was $17,147). Every other page is a full-page, full-bleed illustration, diagram, or photograph.

The Man Who Went to the Far Side of the Moon was originally published in Sweden, in 1999. The English translation showed up in 2003, but I still don't know how it snuck into my library without me seeing it until a few weeks ago.

It is a marvelous piece of work, simple enough for my little boys to understand, engrossing enough for a 42-year-old librarian to enjoy. It is full of tidbits such as the following snatch of conversation between the astronauts who are sitting in quarantine after their return to earth:

As they watch a taped recording of the moon landing, Buzz suddenly turns to Neil and says: "Neil, we missed the whole thing!"

Don't miss this book.

And don't miss the rest of the books reviewed for Nonfiction Monday. Anastasia Suen rounds them all up on Picture Book of the Day.

Meet the meerkat by Darrin Lunde, illustrated by Patricia Wynne - review

Meet the meerkat by Darrin Lunde, illustrated by Patricia Wynne
Patricia Wynne is a contract illustrator for the American Museum of Natural History, and while her somewhat clumsy mice and hominids in books such as Ian Tattersall and Rob DeSalle's Bones, Brains and DNA: The Human Genome and Human Evolution make you feel like maybe she's overworked, the keenly observed drawings of meerkats in this book by mammalogist Darrin Lunde show you what she can do given a single subject. This is an appealing little book about a popular little beast, a rare item in the Easy nonfiction area.

A closer look by Mary McCarthy - review

A Closer Look, by Mary McCarthy
A neato book about observation and scale for the youngest pairs of eyes. VERRY reminiscent of Steve Jenkins, with strong colors and paper collage art.