Inventively for the early-chapter-book format, the story is told in letters written back and forth Simon’s are impeccably spelled on personalized stationery while Baxter’s spelling slowly improves through the letters he scrawls on scraps of paper. Simon believes that there isn’t enough room in Andy’s life for two furry friends, so he uses the power of the pen to get Baxter to move out.

He had done a good job taking care of his boy, Andy, but now that Andy’s parents are divorced, a dog named Baxter has moved into Andy’s dad’s house. 6-8)Įpistolary dispatches from the eternal canine/feline feud. One of a rush of commemorations of Apollo 11’s semicentennial, but this is more about father-daughter intimacy than “One small step….” (Picture book. Marthanne and her family are white some group scenes include black background characters. Only proud to make a living.” Aside from dressing father and daughter in period clothing (when the latter isn’t visualizing herself floating in space), Green doesn’t do much to pick up the slack-one glimpse inside a factory furnished with vaguely drawn hand looms, an illegibly tiny labeled sketch of a spacesuit, and, later, a stack of old-time TVs as a tailpiece notwithstanding. When the child asks whether her father is proud to be part of a great endeavor he answers, “Only proud to make a living, Marthanne. Thus, despite a climactic gathering before the TV to watch Walter Cronkite before Green cuts away to Neil Armstrong’s swaddled figure, there are no narrative details that bring either the times or specifics of work in the factory itself to life.

Instead, in all that comes before she mainly focuses on the admiration any child might feel for a hardworking dad. Though Dempsey looks back on family history in highlighting the small but significant contribution that her father and other workers in a South Carolina textile factory made by manufacturing one layer of spacesuit material, she holds off describing the technological feat or even placing it in historical context until her afterword. A child’s tribute to one of the thousands of blue-collar workers who have made the space program possible.

Papa bring me the moon