Reviewed by: Marianne Dyson

 

Title: If You Decide to Go to the Moon

Author: Faith McNulty

Illustrator: Steven Kellogg

Ages: K-grade 3

Format: hardback/paperback

Pages: 48

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Date: 2005 hardback, 2007 paperback

Retail Price: $16.99 hb/$4.99 pb

ISBN-13: 978-0590483599

 

 

If You Decide to Go to the Moon got starred reviews in Booklist and also School Library Journal. When I saw that it was available in paperback at the Texas Library Association conference, I couldn’t resist buying a copy. Steven Kellogg is definitely one of my favorite artists. But alas, I was sadly disappointed to find so many science errors in the text.

 

The book is about a boy who decides to go to the Moon. The book is written in second person with a narrator telling “you” what to do and what to expect.

 

The second page lists some things to pack for your trip to the Moon, including peanut butter, apples, and cake. While it is possible to take these foods, and they would “taste good in space,” apples and cake are not very good choices. Apples bruise easily, so would need special packaging, and would not stay fresh very long. The inedible core would require a sealed garbage container. Cake, unless it is really dense or bite-sized, would produce crumbs that could get into equipment and cause problems. Breads also go stale quickly because spacecraft maintain low humidity levels. For these reasons, space crews put their peanut butter on tortillas. There is a ton of data about space food available, so even a little research would have uncovered this basic knowledge. (Directions for a space lunch are included in the 2^nd edition of Space Station Science.)

 

The distance quoted to the Moon is accurate, but saying the average speed would be 3,750 mph is like saying that the average altitude of a fighter jet is zero because it spends most of its time on the ground. If you simply divide 240,000 miles by 64 hours, you get 3,750 mph. A space ship must first escape from the surface of Earth and not fall back down, and that requires a speed of 17,500 mph. The big rocket boosters and engines provide the thrust for this during the launch phase that takes about 10 minutes (8 minutes for the space shuttle). Once in Earth orbit, the ship must go even faster, to about 24,000 mph, to escape Earth orbit and reach the Moon. For Apollo, the Command Module provided this extra thrust. The engine burns until the ship reaches 24,000 mph, and then shuts off. Like a ball given just enough push to go up a hill and reach the top, the ship slows to about 2,200 mph as it slips away from Earth. Then it goes “over the hill” and can be captured by the Moon’s gravity. The ship has to slow down even more to “fall” out of lunar orbit to reach the surface.

 

Saying it only takes a few seconds to fly through the atmosphere of Earth is incorrect. I also question the thickness of the atmosphere being 15 miles (79,200 feet). The atmosphere gets thinner with altitude, but not in a linear fashion. At about 19 miles, 99 percent of the atmosphere is below you. Joseph Kittinger flew balloons that high in the 1950s and skydived down. The shuttle escape system is usable at that altitude. But space crews do not consider themselves in space until they reach an altitude of 50 miles. As for the timing, the ships do not go straight up, but travel up and at an angle to reach the inclination for their target orbit. The angle depends on the launch location and target, and so the time to escape the atmosphere varies as well. Also, because acceleration is equal to force divided by mass, the vehicle is slowest at the start when it has all that heavy fuel to lift. The shuttle takes a few seconds just to clear the launch tower! The solid rocket boosters separate at about 2 minutes after launch, at an altitude of about 30 miles, so it would be more correct to say that it only takes a few minutes (not seconds) to fly through most of the atmosphere of Earth.

 

It is inaccurate to say that “meteors and comets are pieces of stars that exploded long ago and have been flying in space ever since.” As I said in my review of Life As We Knew It, many people misuse the term meteor in casual conversation, but if you are writing a book for publication, especially for young impressionable readers, you owe it to them to get it right. Rocks in space are NOT meteors. A meteor is an atmospheric phenomena. A meteoroid (or asteroid if it is large) is the particle itself while in orbit around the Sun. The origin of comets remains mysterious, but they are generally considered leftovers from the formation of the solar system. They are no more pieces of exploding stars than the Earth or human beings. The iron in our blood is likely recycled from the remains of several supernovae whose scattered remains collapsed into the nebula that formed our sun.

 

At least the author did include the fact that the Moon shines by reflected light. This is an important concept to get across to children. The language used to describe the view in space is also quite poetic. (I.e. the author can certainly write well, just doesn’t know her science.)

 

The author suggests that the traveler keep their “eyes fixed on the shining moon.” Because the rocket must constantly roll in a BBQ fashion to maintain temperatures, and do a burn to slow down and be captured by the Moon, it is very likely that travelers to the Moon will not be able to carry out this advice. The Apollo astronauts could not see the Moon as they approached because they had their engine pointed in the direction of the velocity vector. Also, depending on the phase of the Moon, there may not be much of it visible.

 

After landing on the Moon, it says, “Your first look will be disappointing. All you see through your porthole is a cloud of dust stirred up by your landing.” The Apollo astronauts did see some dust upon landing, but it did not obscure the view out the windows. And they were no more than 30 feet above the surface. The fictional rocket looks much taller. With no air to keep the dust aloft, it also settled quickly. I think watching that would be fascinating and beautiful, certainly not disappointing!

 

The statements about the Moon being smaller and having less gravity to pull you down are accurate, as is that if you weighed sixty pounds on Earth, you’d weigh ten on the Moon. But then the book strays from the facts. A quote from the SLJ review includes a serious error that apparently got past the editor and the reviewer: “After landing, the text warns: Your first step will be difficult. You will rise in the air and leap forward like a kangaroo…” There is no air on the Moon! The correct statement would have been “You will rise above the surface…”

 

Then we have the same misconception about temperatures on the Moon that I commented about in my review of the Magic Treehouse #8. This book says that “without a space suit, you would sizzle or freeze.” This may be true, but not until after you died from lack of pressure. The vacuum would suck all the air and liquid out of your body through every opening simultaneously. It is still debated whether or not the body would explode or “deflate,” but it would not boil or “sizzle” (you can’t hear sizzle in a vacuum!) because of heat. As I said in that other review, I suspect a body would initially freeze in vacuum even in the daylight because so much heat is lost so quickly through evaporation.

 

The book discusses the fact that there is no sound because there is no air. This is misleading. Sound is produced by vibration, and humans hear it when their eardrums vibrate as a result of pressure waves in air, water, or even through solids. A space suit has air inside the helmet, so a person can hear on the Moon. If someone tossed a pebble at your visor, you would hear it smack. You might even hear the crunch of pebbles underfoot. I’ll have to ask one of the moonwalkers next time I get a chance! The danger in associating sound with air is that children may then think there can be no sound unless there is air, such as underwater, and that radios (that convert pressure waves to electromagnetic waves and then back again) will not work in space. Asking children how astronauts talked to Mission Control while on the Moon might generate some interesting responses!

 

The boy is told to “look for a patch of color” to find the Apollo landing site. I was told by some lunar scientists that the flags, exposed to the unfiltered rays of the Sun for more than 30 years, are probably faded to gray or white by now. One children’s author speculated that maybe the Apollo 11 flag, since it fell over during the crew’s launch from the surface (this is acknowledged in the book), was covered by dust and therefore retained its colors underneath. But either way, a visitor is not likely to see any red, white, and blue. The glint of metal from the rover would be a more likely thing to catch the eye.

 

As I have mentioned in other reviews, I don’t like the idea of encouraging a child to desecrate a historical site by walking all over it. Suggesting that it would be appropriate to replant the flag is like telling a child it is okay to color in the Gutenberg Bible.

 

The book ends with what the Booklist review calls a “preachy environmental message,” that Earth is special and should be protected. This message doesn’t bother me, but no matter how good a job the children do with taking care of our planet, if they don’t learn how to supplement its resources by using energy and materials from space, and learn how to bring life to lifeless worlds like the Moon, then all life will go extinct in a few billion years when the Sun expands and boils the oceans. How I would like to see Steven Kellogg illustrate what the future Moon could look like if the children of today thought of the Moon as an uncultivated garden instead of a lifeless wasteland!

 

The book begins with the statement, “If you decide to go to the moon in your own rocket ship, read this book before you start.” I would recommend kids instead ask their librarians for books that will show them not only how to appreciate the lovely Earth, but to reach out to the less fortunate worlds and transform them with the touch of life.

 

If You Decide to Go to the Moon gets no points for consistency with real facts (time through atmosphere, speed, rising in the air, no sound because of air), none for use of terms (meteor) and descriptions (food, temperature), one for readability (“stars shine line a million fireflies”), a half point for use of science in the plot (a trip to the Moon is good), and a half point for the character because of the excellent drawings. Total: 2 points. Not recommended.

 

© 2007 Marianne Dyson