ABCs of Aerospace (1971)

I have a smaller amount of materials from the 1970s. When I started collecting it seemed to me there was a lull in books between the burst that started in 1951 that ended with the last moon landing and the coming of the space shuttle. So although I have post-1975 children's space books I never put the same effort into collecting them.

Yerian, Cameron and Yerian, Margaret. Illustrated by Jim Gindraux. ABC's of Aerospace. Los Angeles : Elk Grove Press. (57 p.) 24 cm. Illustrated Cloth.

This book came out at the end of the first space race and shows it. What is most interesting here is the looking back on the NASA efforts.

The book shows the moon landing and other space words with a very simple hand-drawn approach. This was not a best seller but rather something you would hope a school or public library would pick up because space books were so popular.

It also was probably cheaper to produce without photographs (which probably all the competition had).

Yesterday's book was from the beginning of our dream to go to the moon. This book reflects the problem of what was next for NASA. The NASA budgets had been declining since 1965 and no one was sure what was next beyond a shuttle of some sort.