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Summary
Summary
2007 Sibert Medal Winner
"This excellent book will walk the reader step by step through man's first landing on the moon. With photos and text, Catherine Thimmesh accurately portrays the accomplishments of those 'unsung heroes,' the mission control team that assured success of Apollo 11."
--James A. Lovell, astronaut, Apollo 8, Apollo 13, Gemini 7, and Gemini 12
Here is a rare perspective on a story we only thought we knew. For Apollo 11, the first moon landing, is a story that belongs to many, not just the few and famous. It belongs to the seamstress who put together twenty-two layers of fabric for each space suit. To the engineers who created a special heat shield to protect the capsule during its fiery reentry. It belongs to the flight directors, camera designers, software experts, suit testers, telescope crew, aerospace technicians, photo developers, engineers, and navigators.
Gathering direct quotes from some of these folks who worked behind the scenes, Catherine Thimmesh reveals their very human worries and concerns. Culling NASA transcripts, national archives, and stunning NASA photos from Apollo 11, she captures not only the sheer magnitude of this feat but also the dedication, ingenuity, and perseverance of the greatest team ever--the team that worked to first put man on that great gray rock in the sky.
Author Notes
Catherine Thimmesh is the award-winning author of many books for children, including Girls Think of Everything and Team Moon , winner of the Sibert Medal. Her books have received numerous starred reviews, appeared on best books lists, and won many awards, including the IRA Children's Book Award and Minnesota Book Award. She lives in Minnesota with her family. www.catherinethimmesh.com.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This behind-the-scenes look at the first Apollo moon landing has the feel of a public television documentary in its breadth and detail.The book opens with several photographs of people huddled around TVs to view the event (one shows Italians watching a small set at an outdoor cafe). The author then delves into the back story of the organizations and hundreds of thousands of people who made the 1969 mission possible. Readers meet 24-year-old "computer whiz kid Jack Garman," who helped work through worrisome computer glitches during the Eagle's landing, as well as one of the seamstresses who sewed the spacesuits ("We didn't worry too much until the guys on the moon started jumping up and down. And that gave us a little bit of an eyebrow twitch"). The 16 chapter-like segments flow chronologically, from John F. Kennedy's 1961 speech to Apollo 11's splashdown. Thimmesh (Madame President) peppers her lengthy, fact-filled narrative with folksy adages (e.g., "Here they were, less than 500 feet from the moon, and just about plumb out of fuel"). The colloquialisms sometime seem at odds with the myriad of engineering acronyms and jargon. But the author maintains a conversational tone, and tackles and explains tough topics such as "cluster interference" in parachute deployment and a bit of the chemistry behind developing the astronauts' dramatic photographs, many of which illustrate the story. Even if the jargon gives readers pause, the little-known facts will keep their interest level high. Ages 9-up. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate, Middle School) From launch to splashdown, Thimmesh gives names and voices to the 400,000-strong army that got Neil Armstrong and company to the moon and back. Taking as her organizing principle the journey itself, she describes how each element was made possible by NASA and its many contractors. Thus readers learn about the 14,000 people at North American Rockwell who built the command module Columbia, the 17,000 people at NASA's launch operations, and so on, from the women who sewed the spacesuits to the engineers who designed the re-entry parachutes. The narrative balances what could become a recitation of corporate names with a colloquial approach (at times a little too breezy) and high drama, from the disaster speech President Nixon never had to make to the various hair-raising glitches that could have made that speech a reality. An extraordinary amount of primary source material aids in giving specificity to the thousands: the recollections of many of the key players, recorded in interviews with the author, share space with excerpts from mission transcripts and the TV broadcast of the event. A gracious plenty and more of back matter both authenticates the narrative and gives eager readers many directions for further exploration. Add a striking white-on-black design and gorgeous archival photographs (many of them full-page), and the result is a spectacular and highly original addition to the literature of space exploration. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5 Up-In infectiously hyperbolic prose that's liberally interspersed with quotes and accompanied by sheaves of period photos, Thimmesh retraces the course of the space mission that landed "an actual man, on the actual Moon." It's an oft-told tale, but the author tells it from the point of view not of astronauts or general observers, but of some of the 17,000 behind-the-scenes workers at Kennedy Space Center, the 7500 Grumman employees who built the lunar module, the 500 designers and seamstresses who actually constructed the space suits, and other low-profile contributors who made the historic flight possible. Despite occasional contrast issues when the white-on-black text is printed over blown-up photographs, this dramatic account will mesmerize even readers already familiar with the event-and also leave them awed by the level of care and dedication it took to surmount so many daunting technological challenges. Drawn from personal interviews and oral histories as well as a wide array of published sources, this stirring, authoritative tribute to the collective effort that left "...footprints, crisp and clear, pressed purposefully and magnificently into the lunar dust" belongs in every collection.-John Peters, New York Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
"For me, that was the time in history and the event to participate in above all others." That comment, from one of the 400,000 involved in the team effort to put men on the moon in 1969, sums up the essence of this dramatic account of the work of people behind the scenes in the Apollo program. Illustrated with striking black-and-white photos, the white text on a black background of each page underscores the risk of this venture into the unknown. Beginning with Nixon's just-in-case prepared announcement of the astronaut's "sacrifice," the author presents the expedition as a series of challenges, including surprising details. Not all the challenges were directly related to the voyage: a windstorm in Australia threatened television transmission; photographs had to be perfect and the film disinfected (of nonexistent bacteria) before it was developed. The authors emphasizes the paper-and-pencil calculations, the endless testing and checking, and elaborate recordkeeping that supported this work, and the sense of personal responsibility each participant felt. This beautiful and well-documented tribute will introduce a new generation to that triumphant time. (author's note, resources, bibliography, glossary) (Nonfiction. 10+) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
