Station "Moon" (Stantsiia "Luna") (1965)

A Russian children's book today. While the US was involved in the space race and telling its children about how the US was going to be first, the Russians were also publishing pro-space books for their children.

Since I don't read Russian (I had to have a friend translate the title) I can't give you much detail about the book .

Author: Klushantsev, P. (Pavel).
Title: Stantsiia "Luna" / P. Klushantsev ; khudozhniki E. Voĭshvillo, IU. Kiselev.
Published: Moskva : "Detskaia lit-ra", 1965.
Physical Details: 63 p. : ill.

The Complete Space Rocketeer (1955)

This is more of an adult book than a children's book but it still has a number of fantastical illustrations worth sharing.

Chambers, Bradford. Illustrated by Chambers, Eve. The Complete Space Rocketeer. New York: Stavon Publishers. (62 p.) 21 cm.

Text includes topics such as rocket theory, space suits, space stations and trips to the Moon and Mars. Ends with the prophetic words "…let's conquer space now. We can do that." Full of drawings of rockets, space suits and a manned landing on the Moon. There was a 1956 edition re-titled "The Key to Interplanetary Space Travel".

Kellogg's Cereal Space Stickers (1969)

If there is a "Rosebud-like" object in my life it seems to be these stickers.


Somehow all my life I have remembered these stickers and regretted their loss when they got thrown out.

As far as I can reconstruct these came out in 1969 when I was 9 years old. As I ate my way through boxes of Kellogg's cereals I would put them on my school notebook.

When the notebook finally died I took the blue canvas (remember those?) off and saved it.


What is interesting is how they remained in my memory as an adult, so when I finally found a set of them recently I can't quite get over it. They are as I remembered and you can go home again.

Since I only have some of them I have to make some assumptions. It looks like they made one for every manned mission up to Apollo 10 for 20 stickers total. I think the series was done around April 1969 since every sticker has the date of the mission on the back except the Apollo 10 which gives an expected lift-off date of May 18, 1969. (I base this on the Apollo 9 sticker dated March 3-13, 1969)






Each sticker has a short description of the mission on the back along with the astronauts who went on the mission.

The best thing to me at the time (and maybe why I remember them) is that they made up their own logo/symbol for each mission.

Stories to Remember (1962)

One of my side passions is those books used in school to teach about space. This one has only one or two stories about space in it, the rest being your standard "Dick and Jane" reader. However the cover is a lot of fun.

The illustrations are a nice reminder of the wonder of Echo. It used to be bouncing signals off a satellite was a miracle, so this reader took the time to explain this wonder to children.

The Giant Book of Amazing Stories (1952)

For interior see; http://www.flickr.com/photos/gorillamen/sets/72157609260394639/show/

The Question and Answer Book of Space (1965)

Just a quick one today. This was one of my favorite books in the school library. It did as promised and answered some of my questions that I couldn't find an adult smart enough to answer.

Sonneborn, Ruth A. Illustrated by Polgreen, John. The Question and Answer Book of Space. New York: Random House. (66 p.) 29 cm.

Arranged in 5 categories with questions and answers about: space, rockets, astronauts, a trip to the Moon and space stations. The book has some very nice color paintings of rockets, astronauts, space stations, and a manned Moon landing. Part of the "Let's Find Out Books" series. See 1966, 1969 UK reprints. Also 1970 edition.

Dan Dare's Space Book (1954)

Someone was asking "What about Dan Dare?" This was not an Eagle Annual but rather a special publication about spaceflight. Dan Dare was the comic strip space hero in Britain in the 1950s and 60s. His adventures are worth hunting down.

Morris, Marcus and Hampson, Frank. Dan Dare’s Space Book. London : Hulton Press Ltd. (69 p.) 27 cm.

The "annual" was devoted to the fictional hero Dan Dare with fictional stories and comic strips. But it also includes a number of non-fiction articles about space flight including an essay by Arthur C Clarke "Is Space Travel Possible?" with illustrations by Chesley Bonestell and an essay with photographs about the V-2 testing at White Sands, NM.

One of the big treats are the 8 color (or colour) plates. Here are three of them:

Man Leaves the Earth (1962)

This is an SRA book number 19.

Leo Schneider. Man Leaves the Earth. Illus. by Gustav Schrotter .

It is a synopsis of:

Space in your future.
Leo Schneider
New York, Harcourt, Brace & World [1961]

SRA (Science Readings Associates) was a program of books for the classroom. These were shortened version of published books, that were supposed to be "interesting reading". There were 72 books in the IIc series.