Buster Brown Goes to Mars (1958)

 

This comic is a promotional comic from Buster Brown shoes. If you went into a shoe store and tried on Buster Brown shoes you would get a comic book with the name of the store stamped/printed on it. Buster Brown  (and his dog Tige) were a feature of 1950s and 1960s shoe store. In this case Buster goes to Mars and tames a space dog. But of course the adult at home doesn't believe him even though the Martians gave him a medal.

Buster Brown Goes to Mars. (Promotional comic from Buster Brown Shoe Company.) NY: Western Publishing. (16 p.) 1958. 

Buster gets to see the Dark Side of the Moon (years before Pink Floyd)

Secrets of Space Exploration (1958)

 

Celebrating 2,883,898 views of my Dreams of Space site today. I started this Blog in Feb of 2009 so now it is over 17 years old. (Drinking party next year!)

My first "space" book in Arabic. I am pretty sure that it was more for adults and from the illustrations may be a translation of a Russian book. It still fascinates me that spaceflight is so knew that people published space books for the layperson to explain the basics of space flight. Finding these book in many languages convinces me that the "space race" was global as people tried to understand what had changed with Sputnik launches.

So it is a bit of an oddity and can't be very common or well known. 

Sharaf, Dr. Abdulaziz Tareeh. Secrets of Space Exploration. ( كتاب أسرار غزو الفضاء الأقمار الصناعية Arabic) (101 p.) 1958. 

Illustration of Sputnik satellite

A Russian space station?

A more traditional Russian space station

Maintain gravity on a longer trip using centripetal force.

My favorite illustration in the book. A Moon lander with return ship.

Getting to Mars

Getting to Mercury and Venus

My Weekly Reader 1958-1959

                                                        March 3, 1958
 

Happy New Year's! I picked up a set of My Weekly Reader so I thought I would share some with you as I have a chance to scan them. Some of these are from My Weekly Reader Picture Reader. This was the version for 1st graders. The next is from the My Weekly reader Summer Cruise. This was for older children.

June 8, 1959

The article is not about imaginary flying saucers but rather how the military is developing their own. Hope you enjoyed some bits of what children saw while they were in school.

The Spaceman at Home and at School (1958)

 

The Spaceman at Home and at School was a pamphlet for the elementary school teacher. It gave them ideas about how to teach about space flight in the classroom with vivid examples. It was not about the history of spaceflight but rather how to build on the "Space Race" excitement already in the classrooms of the time. Probably not too many copies of this one still around.

 It is a charming spaceflight craft and costume handbook. I found a copy that come from a retired teacher's classroom. Along with it she had reproduced drawings from the book and a play about spaceflight. She also had mimeographs to hand out of the play and to send home with parents who might have to create a costume. 

Miller, Ray. The Spaceman at Home and at School. Riverside, CA: Bruce Miller Publication. (24 p.) 1958. 

My 2016 blog post about this book and record https://dreamsofspace.blogspot.com/2016/09/space-horizons-unlimited-1957.html

One of the copied plans for parents.

Moon Trip (1958)

 

Some of you are familiar with the Ley-Polgreen 4 book "Adventures in Space series (Man-Made Satellites, Space Pilots, Space Stations and Space Travel)." 

This is about a 4 book space series you may never have seen. Michael Chester and William Nephew also did a great series of books about the grand space flight progression. They may be less remembered because while their illustrations are great they used a limited color pallet.

So today is a repeat since I did blog about these books in 2010 but probably it is long enough to do a rescan of them. 

Here is the front and back cover of the paperback reprint

Nephew, William and Chester, Michael. Illustrated by Robinson, Jerry. Moon Trip: True Adventure in Space. New York: Putnam. (63 p.) 23 cm.

This is a very unusual HORIZONTAL take-off technique. I have not seen this illustrated before.