Undersea Base (1974)

 

So a large change for today, instead of Outer Space books we are going to Inner Space with Undersea Base. I have blogged about Mae Freeman's book Space Base (1974) several times. In it she showed children visiting a space station in the future.  I recently found she had also written a children's book about futurist undersea exploration and children visiting an undersea base in the future. The late 60s and early 70s had an optimism about what might happen in the future and that shows in this lovely book. As a child of that time I remember being a big space flight fan and thinking about living in space as an astronaut and I also had dreams of living under the sea as an aquanaut.

Freeman, Mae. Illustrated by Mardon, John. Undersea Base. New York: Franklin Watts. (64 p.) 1974. 

Judy Space Puzzles (1970s)

 

Here is another quick post for you. Space puzzles! 

I last shared these in 2016 so it is about time to bring them back.

These were classroom puzzles (although they were probably owned by kids at home too). They were mostly for Kindergarten-2nd grade kids and were "educational" as well as fun.  They are labeled as produced by the "Judy" company and were part of a "Space Exploration" series.

I really liked them when I found one. These 11 Judy puzzles are all the ones I was able to chase down. There are several about early space flight and a number about the Moon landing.

This last one is not a Judy puzzle but also wooden

Space Witch (1959)

 

Here is a Halloween space book post for you. I have done posts for Christmas, Easter and Yuri's Night but never one for Halloween.

Space Witch is a pleasant story about a witch who wants to expand her frightening to creatures on other planets. She constructs a "space broom" and a space suit and goes looking for fun and scares. Her big breakthrough was using jet-black magic for fuel. A solution Von Braun had rejected in the early 50s :) 

Freeman, Don. Space Witch. New York: Puffin Books. (48 p.) 1959

Outer Space (1953)

 

An oldie from 15 years ago (The last time I blogged about this one). I found my copy of this and was able to add a lot more scans of this early space treasure.  Outer Space was evidently a give-away comic book at Atlantic Richfield gas stations. For those of you who did not know, often in the 1950s and 1960s when you got a tank of gas there were promotional giveaways. They could be comics, books, dishes, antennae balls...etc.

This is a treasury of early space flight illustrations and I assume few have seen this. So I have tried to scan as much of the comic as I could. A lot of it seems to have been "borrowed" or influenced by the March 22, 1952 Collier's issue.

Atlantic Richfield. Outer Space. New York: Vital Publications. (15 p.) 1953.

Can you imagine? A rocket could cost more than 4 million dollars! And be more than 300 ft high.