We Land on The Moon (1969)

There were a number of coloring books that came out in 1969/1970 about the moonlanding. I like this one especially for its futuristic illustrations. Plus someone colored in one of the drawings very nicely.

Coloring books are a whole separate collecting area but I have a hard time resisting those that mix the non-fictional images in with the fiction. In some ways coloring books were the picture books for those children who didn't/wouldn't read. Your parents loved that you were occupied. And the "artist" got to really focus on an image and get it stuck in your head.

Man-Made Moons (1960)

Just a simple one today. I like the stark design that Marie Neurath puts into her space books. With just a few colors the diagrams stand out almost like icons. You could almost image international spaceport signs using these images.

Neurath, Marie. Man-made Moons. New York : Lothrop, Lee and Shepard / London : Parrish. (36 p.) 22 cm.

The book discusses satellites, rocket fuels, orbits, and animals in satellites. Part of the "How and Why" series (US) and "Colour Book" series (UK). See also the 1961 reprint.

Scientific Wonders (1953) / Wonders of Space Travel (1954)

Lion Weekly was a magazine for children with comics and stories. (from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_(comics)). It ran from 1952-1974. Evidently once in a while they would have extra booklets as part of the magazine.

I am fascinated with children's non-fiction about spaceflight. I especially like these early efforts where children were told and shown their brave new future. Here are a couple of these booklets from Lion: Scientific Wonders of Today and Tomorrow 1953 (Lion #32) and Wonders of Space Travel 1954 (Lion #116).



I love how these early efforts towards space were presented as glimpses of the future.






In this one mixed in with the factual items about plans for space was this great illustration of the moon city of the future. It is by R. A. Smith , the amazing British space artist (http://dreamsofspace.nfshost.com/exp8mo.htm) from the AC Clarke book: "The Exploration of Space"

Travel to Distant Worlds (1960)

An updating of a 1958 book, this will be my last Russian for a while. It has been fun but as the 50s melt into the 60s the illustrations become more factual and less awesome.

I have been intrigued by how the flavor of these books changed very little over the decade. The books started out predicting space flight as an ultimate goal of the Russian people and ends with showing that it had been predicted all along and changes to concentrating on the true exploits of the Russian people.

The same subjects of the painting appear again and again but the visionary art is amazing. The romantic sense of these pictures is hard to deny. This impressionism was lacking from many of the western paintings of this same technology.

Thanks for the kind comments. I am afraid this series has used up a couple of months of my blogger storage space. I couldn't resist however showing some of the unseen art. When I discovered these books I was thrilled. Since I have no Russian language skill finding them has been hit or miss for me but I treasure each one I have found.

To Other Planets (1959)

OK again I have a beautiful book: To Other Planets by Pavel Klushantsev. (My helpful readers chimed in on this one to help me out.)


This may be my favorite Russian book in terms of illustrations. Until I got this copy I only knew of it from the 1962 Hebrew translation I had found a number of years ago (I had even less luck translating that title).

But the illustrations were the same and I knew I had found a winner. This is the gold medal of space books. Tons and tons of full color illustrations showing children how man will go to space and what it will look like. Of course it starts off explaining about rockets and showing their launch.

From here it talks about launching a space station and heading towards the moon. The space station illustration seems an "interpretation " of the Fred Freeman illustration from the 1954-1956 Collier's series but has its own Russian slant.

I am still not sure how space station designers got the idea for have a 3 prong stations. Two or four makes sense for balance but the 3 prong was developed for the Disney programs so they would not impinge on the Collier's design copyright. They seemed to have corrected that flaw in this illustration.They laid out the idea for a moon trip in an elegant series of drawings that make the whole mission seems very easy. In 1959 it seemed to every child that we were just a few steps from standing on the Moon.

Journey into Cosmos (1958)

M. Vasiljev. Journey into Cosmos. Illustrations by A.S. Sysoyev (B&W in text), N.V. Shchelznyaka and N.M. Kolchitskogo (colored paintings).

The title has also been translated as "Travel to Space".

The space race gave free rein to all those wild plans for conquering the solar system. The illustrations during this time show an amazing mix of factual and fantasy. Every idea seemed possible now that rockets had actually proven their worth,

Specifically going to the Moon was just the beginning of the journey. The books really jumped from "maybe" we will go to space someday to "this is your future."

I especially like this vision of the ultimate rocket motor. Bigger and better means we can go anywhere we want.

About Tsiolkovsky (1958)

The launch of Sputnik 1 in late 1957 changed the books being published in Russia as well as the Western world. For all the media coverage space flight up until that point was not seen as possible by the average person. The idea that "someday" something would orbit the earth or "someday" someone would go to the Moon was taken as a vague dream.

It was this iconic image, a actual machine made by people that was flying in space. This image changed everything.

For the "fans" of spaceflight this was a vindication of their dreaming and prodding of others to make rockets real. It took rockets as a weapon to get people to build improved ones, but it was the ability to put something in orbit that was encouraged by these visionaries. There are very few military reasons to bother putting something in orbit but a whole bunch of scientific and creative ones.

The Russians were lead by Tsiolkovsky as their visionary. His writings and plans for how to get to space and what people would do when they got they had gotten into the Russian soul. His writings were part science fiction, part inventor and part religious conviction. He was convinced that we were destined to go to the stars.

This is a 82 page pamphlet about Tsiolkovsky. Part of a classroom series for younger readers.