TEAM MOON HOW 400,000 PEOPLE LANDED APOLLO 11 ON THE MOON

1. BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Thimmesh, Catherine. 2006. TEAM MOON: HOW 400,000 PEOPLE LANDED APOLLO 11 ON THE MOON. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 9780618507573

1. PLOT SUMMARY:
Catherine Thimmesh writes about a few of the people and organizations that made the project possible. She begins with pictures of hundreds of people gathered to watch the grainy black & white TV pictures beamed back live from the moon. She includes the seamstresses who sewed together the 22 layers of the spacesuits to the team that designed the parachute system that lowered the capsule into the ocean. Each chapter details one particular segment of the Moon landing, its central challenge, and the solution to that challenge.
Illustrated primarily with archival photographs, the book includes extensive back matter, an author's note, pictures and quotes from an assortment of team members, bibliography, chapter notes, additional sources (including many Web sites and other media), starting points for further exploration, information on other missions, an index, and a glossary.

3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS:
With outstanding photos and a lively text, TEAM MOON will hold the attention of even the most reluctant reader as it relates behind-the-scene stories of Apollo 11, in which the United States first successfully landed men on the Moon and returned them back home safely. The photo illustrations also bring the story to life, especially the idea of how so many people had a hand in the mission. Gathering direct quotes from some of these folks who worked behind the scenes, Catherine Thimmesh reveals their very human worries and concerns. This is a very inspiring book!

4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S):
*From School Library Journal
Grade 5 Up–In infectiously hyperbolic prose that's liberally interspersed with quotes and accompanied by sheaves of period photos, Thimmesh retraces the course of the space mission that landed an actual man, on the actual Moon. It's an oft-told tale, but the author tells it from the point of view not of astronauts or general observers, but of some of the 17,000 behind-the-scenes workers at Kennedy Space Center, the 7500 Grumman employees who built the lunar module, the 500 designers and seamstresses who actually constructed the space suits, and other low-profile contributors who made the historic flight possible. Despite occasional contrast issues when the white-on-black text is printed over blown-up photographs, this dramatic account will mesmerize even readers already familiar with the event–and also leave them awed by the level of care and dedication it took to surmount so many daunting technological challenges. Drawn from personal interviews and oral histories as well as a wide array of published sources, this stirring, authoritative tribute to the collective effort that left ...footprints, crisp and clear, pressed purposefully and magnificently into the lunar dust belongs in every collection.–John Peters, New York Public Library
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*Publishers Weekly
This behind-the-scenes look at the first Apollo moon landing has the feel of a public television documentary in its breadth and detail.The book opens with several photographs of people huddled around TVs to view the event (one shows Italians watching a small set at an outdoor cafe). The author then delves into the back story of the organizations and hundreds of thousands of people who made the 1969 mission possible. Readers meet 24-year-old "computer whiz kid Jack Garman," who helped work through worrisome computer glitches during the Eagle's landing, as well as one of the seamstresses who sewed the spacesuits ("We didn't worry too much until the guys on the moon started jumping up and down. And that gave us a little bit of an eyebrow twitch"). The 16 chapter-like segments flow chronologically, from John F. Kennedy's 1961 speech to Apollo 11's splashdown. Thimmesh (Madame President) peppers her lengthy, fact-filled narrative with folksy adages (e.g., "Here they were, less than 500 feet from the moon, and just about plumb out of fuel"). The colloquialisms sometime seem at odds with the myriad of engineering acronyms and jargon. But the author maintains a conversational tone, and tackles and explains tough topics such as "cluster interference" in parachute deployment and a bit of the chemistry behind developing the astronauts' dramatic photographs, many of which illustrate the story. Even if the jargon gives readers pause, the little-known facts will keep their interest level high. Ages 9-up. (June) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

5. CONNECTIONS:
*Integrate into a Social Studies or History lesson, in which the students would write a report on the history of Apollo 11.
*Other Apollo 11 titles:
Green, Carl R. Apollo 11 Rockets to First Moon Landing. ISBN 9780766051645
Hehner, Barbara. First on the Moon: What It Was Like When Man Landed on the Moon. ISBN 9780786804894
Mason, Paul. The Moon Landing, July 20, 1969. ISBN9780739852361