Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon
By Catherine Thimmesh
Houghton Mifflin Company, $19.95
80 pp.; ISBN: 0618507574

Review by Amy Brozio-Andrews

Thirty-seven years on, it's tempting to take space travel for granted-- NASA sends up space shuttles, the astronauts do what they need to do, the shuttle returns to earth, and everyone carries on. In July 1969 though, people around the nation, and around the world, watched as Apollo 11 trekked out of Earth's atmosphere; it's destination: the moon; it's mission: the first lunar walk, made possible not just by the three astronauts aboard the space craft, but also the efforts of the almost half-million people who worked so hard to get them there and back safely.

Setting the stage for the Apollo 11 mission and then quoting from a worst-case-scenario speech that had been written for President Nixon in the event of a catastrophe, "Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace...", author Catherine Thimmesh immediately makes real the gravity and un-surety of space flight for readers (and probably their parents, too) far too young to remember a time before space travel was normal, if not an everyday occurrence.

From imagination to implementation, Thimmesh gives young readers a smart, insightful look at the myriad components of a successful space flight. From engineers who designed and built the landing module to seamstresses who sewed the spacesuits and scientists who developed fuel systems, Thimmesh shows time and time again that Apollo 11 was more than just the efforts of astronauts Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong.

With strong visual appeal, full page black and white and color photography from a variety of perspectives helps make history real. Text is strategically placed on the page in an unobtrusive manner, allowing the photos to tell the story as much as the prose does. There are occasional instances where the white text is too close a contrast to the beige surface of the moon, but most of the time, the white text on dark background works well.

Thimmesh's writing style is excited yet authoritative. She simplifies complex topics for understanding by young readers, and includes plenty of instances of parenthetical definitions or clarifications of scientific or space industry terms. But while simplified, the science is never dumbed down. Thimmesh is quite up front about the challenges of Apollo 11-- from the possibility that the returning craft could burn up in the atmosphere to the preparations that were made in case the astronauts returned with strange moon bugs and germs.

Her powerful story of the selfless cooperation of so many individuals is seamlessly intercut with quotes from those who actually worked on the Apollo mission. Her reliance on original sources adds energy to an already exciting adventure that will likely appeal most to upper-elementary school readers, especially reluctant readers, with its highly visual component.

Volumes of information about the Apollo 11 landing are broken down into manageable chunks, chaptered by the challenges faced by the mission. Not just those faced by the astronauts, though, but also those faced by the ground crew (engineers scrambling to resolve alarm codes) and those working to beam images from the moon to televisions around the world (strong winds at the Parkes Radio Telescope, Parkes, Australia, threatened to interrupt the telescope's ability to receive signals from the moon).

With her thoughtful and stirring book, Catherine Thimmesh has pulled back the veil of comfort around space travel, and, if only for a bit, brings the reader back to a place in time when such an adventure was only the stuff of dreams and team work.