The Space Age (1962)

This is an British children's reader. Along with Dick and Jane books there would be these books in school with specialized vocabulary. Usually only 54 or 200 words selected from an approved word list.

This book focused on the space age in a very broad sense. It talks about the Earth and how in this new age both the Russians and the U.S. are sending up rockets to see the Earth from space.

Space Rockets: To punch out and assemble (1958)

I love punch-out books about space flight and have a couple of them. Punch-out books are someplace between the world of toy and that of the book. This one is only 8 pages and really has no text.

The upside to these books are the images. Here you see a Von Braun type rocket launching up towards the space station. Down below you see a realist looking rocket just like in the newspapers.

This is one of those effects of the illustrations in these space books that fascinates me. By putting something that is real on the same page as one of these fantastic rockets you imply that both are real. Even if one is unlikely the implication is it is just a matter of time.

Let's go on a space trip (1963)

Chester, Michael. Illustrated by Coggins, Jack. Let's Go on a Space Trip. New York: GP Putnam's Sons. (48 p.) 21 cm.











This book was a standard on the school library book shelves of the 1960s. Part of the "Let's go on a..." series which took children to different occupations. This let children imagine what it would be like to be an astronaut.






Jack Coggins was an important illustrator of children's books and did the illustrations for the first "real" children's book about space flight Rockets, Jets, Guided Missiles, and Space Ships (1951).












This illustration of a firey re-entry of a capsule is especially vivid. It was books like these that created my love of space flight and my dreams of space.

You can see that the drawings were adapted from some of the very early Apollo designs. We were not always sure what the future would really look like but these books showed we were sure we would get there.

My Weekly Reader 1957-1958

This is a different post today. I loved My Weekly Reader when I was in elementary school. It was both slacker time to read in class and a chance to read about cool space stuff. These are a few I have found from the 1950s showing the start of the space age.

December 1957: We have decided how the U.S. is going to catch up to the shock of Sputnik.

By March of 1958, after a successful launch in Jan. (finally!) we show that we have this space thing under control and are planning to send U.S. men into space soon.

By November 1958, it is "Here we come, Moon!" We had a confidence that this space travel thing wasn't as hard as the Russians made it out to be. My Weekly Reader told me so.

And now a little quiz from Sept 1958 to see "What do you know about space?"

The First Book of Space Travel (1953)

"Up with the rocket"

In 1953 space travel was science fiction to most Americans. This remarkable book appeared to show how it could be possible. Jeanne Bendick was an author and illustrator of children's books, mostly nonfiction. She started out as an illustrator for Jack and Jill magazine and was an author/illustrator of over 100 children's books.

She had a gift for using simple images to explain complicated concepts. I like her almost impressionistic, sketchy style and the use of the red and green to make the images jump.

Bendick herself said, "One part of the job I set for myself is to make those young readers see that everything is connected to everything-that science isn't something apart. It's a part of everyday life. It has been that way since the beginning. The things the earliest scientists learned were the building blocks for those who came after. Sometimes they accepted earlier ideas. Sometimes they questioned them and challenged them. I want to involve readers directly in the text so they will ask themselves questions and try to answer them. If they can't answer, that's not really important... Questions are more important than answers... If I were a fairy godmother, my gift to every child would be curiosity." (Gale Literary Databases. "Jeanne Bendick." Contemporary Authors. )

Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Science (1965)

Here is one that you have probably never seen unless you grew up in England and saw it as a child.

Walt Disney's wonderful world of science :a child's first book of the world we live in. London : Young World Productions, 30 p. : 34 cm.

Disney did a number of science publications based on their science films in the late 1950s. Most of the science changed in the 1960s but the illustrations were recycled in this book.

Of interest to me was re-use of the Man in Space, and Tomorrow the Moon illustrations. Since this book was written after manned space flight had started and the illustrations were done before manned flight, the text does not exactly match the illustrations. It captures a moment when reality almost outpaced imagination.

Journey to the Moon (1969)

"...when man first stepped on the moon, many small children were either asleep or throughly bewildered. "









This is another of those visual treats that you can find in children's books. Erich Fuchs is a german artist who took the moon landing as an inspiration to create a book of abstract paintings about the Apollo 11 landing.




As the book jacket says,

"Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." When these astonishing words were first broadcast and later, on the evening of July 20, 1969, when man first stepped on the moon, many small children were either asleep or throughly bewildered. Now, in Journey to the Moon, a brilliant German painter has brought the strange wonder of the Apollo 11 mission within the reach and understanding of these younger children. Erich Fuchs, whose work has been compared with that of Paul Klee, captures each important event of the eight-day mission in space. In his beautiful paintings a child can relive again and again, the launching, the flight, the landing, and the return to Earth of the three astronauts. A brief, clear text explains the day-by-day progress of the mission

Since I was the stately age of 10 years old during the moon landing I was fascinated and consumed rather than "bewildered". But I do agree that trying to capture that moment in such strong paintings helps us remember how strange and wonderful it all seemed at the time.