Mickey Mouse's Spaceship Pencil Box (1935)

 

A fun piece of ephemera today, a Mickey Mouse Pencil box from 1935.  People forget about the craze for Mickey Mouse in the 1930s, but they also forget how the revolutionary idea of rockets taking people into space was also a current "fad". This captures in a whimsical way for children how people could travel into space.  There were a series of similar Dixon Mickey Mouse pencil boxes on different topics but this one particularly caught my eye (of course).

From the Weston's label inside they may have been a promotional/premium item with these crackers.

Operation Moon: Facts We’ll Need to Know When We Travel to Other Worlds (1955)

 

Operation Moon is an early SRA (Science Research Associates) school reading pamphlet from the 1st year of the program in 1955. (For more about SRA read here). It covers the basics of spaceflight and then explains how we might voyage to the Moon in the future. 

Burnett, R. Operation Moon: Facts We’ll Need to Know When We Travel to Other Worlds. Chicago: Science Research Associates. (48 p.) 1955.

The "Collier's/Von Braun" rocket was still the model for the future

Similarly the Lunar Lander is also modeled after "Collier's/Von Braun"

I like very much these concrete predictions of the future.

L'espace (1972)

 

Part of a series of French children's books (Cadet-rama), L'espace focused on astronomy and spaceflight. I really like the illustration style, a simple and modern approach. 

Grée, Alain.  Illustrated by Alain Grée. L'espace, Éditions Casterman. 29 p. 28 cm, 1972.

Wait for Us Stars (1967)

 

Wait for Us Stars is a book of Russian space art. Probably not a children's book but still a beautiful picture book.  There is so much in here that I will only share a little, maybe I will do a part 2 another time. It contains primarily the art of  Alexi Leonov and Andrei Sokolov. 

Wait For Us Stars. 25 x 26 cm. 106 p. 1967.

Himmelsstürmer (1963)

 

This book is not about spaceflight but has a lot of nice space-age illustrations. It is a book of paper airplane models but as you see I don't know if it came with a kit or these were ideas to build. I am a fan of Thunderbirds (Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, 1964), and this has that same futuristic feel to the building and aircraft. The title roughly translates to "a person with highflying (and idealistic) plans."

Himmelsstürmer Hans Linde. Leipzig : Rudolf Arnold Verlag.  32 p. 1963.