Friday 27 May 2011

The Sea of Tranquility

Interesting things happen when you have a mega-selling blockbuster book hit. All your previous books resurface, relabelled as "bestselling author of", and then people like me want to read them.

I read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time soon after it came out, in the midst of all the frenzy and hype. And I loved it. Clever. Quirky. I've since read boom! Haddon's first book which was a repackaged, updated and buffed version of Gridzbi Spudvetch! It was a fun, engaging and silly tale, that lacked the punch of the megaselling Dog in the Night-time. 





Recently I came across a re-issued picture book that Haddon initially wrote in 1996. It was on sale for 5 bucks at a local bookstore, so I bought it, just so I could read it. I'll donate it to my son's school library now. It's a nice story, and I really like the moon illustrations, I think the kids should like it. The version I bought has a CD included as well. 


A nice picture book about the 1969 moon landing from the point of view of a young boy who avidly watches the skies, and the events of that summer and that night in particular. He stares at the moon through binoculars for hours, keeps a scrapbook about the lunar mission. It is cool to think that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's footprints are still up there! And sad to remember that there was another astronaut on that mission, but noone knows his name- well I didn't at least. Although I just checked with my husband and he did know it! Although it took him a while to remember it. Michael Collins by the way. 




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