Thursday, June 06, 2019

If You Had Your Birthday Party on the Moon by Joyce Lapin and Simona Ceccarelli - Children's Day #5

This is the final post for Children's Day! Thanks for reading! 


When you're weightless, there's no up or down. 
In fact, if your birthday cake floats upside down, it'll
be just as safe as it is right-side up. 

If You Had Your Birthday Party On the Moon takes young readers and listeners from a little after take-off to the return flight to Earth as author Joyce Lapin imagines what it would be like to celebrate a birthday on the moon. Topics discussed are gravity or the lack of it (on Earth, in space, and on the moon), how long it takes to fly to the moon, what it's like to experience weightlessness, how astronauts sleep, what the moon looks like up close and why it looks that way, light from both the Earth and the sun, how long a moon day lasts vs. the length of an Earth day, why the sky is black instead of blue when you look up from the moon and much more.

As impressively informative as If You Had Your Birthday Party on the Moon is, I think my favorite thing about it is the illustrations, which I absolutely love. They're such happy images. Children jump in low gravity, sit on boulders to watch the Earth rotate, play ball, make angels in the moon dust, play freeze tag, and try to hit a piñata. In every case, the science behind what happens (balloons fall because there's no air on the moon; balls fly six times as far because of the lower gravity) is described. There's even a two-page spread about things that were left behind on the moon by astronauts, why they're still exactly where they were left, including the footprints, and why the flags have faded.

Highly recommended - A delightful way to present a science lesson about the moon and space travel. When I signed up to review If You Had Your Birthday Party on the Moon, I expected something a little more silly and less informative. I was definitely pleasantly surprised.

My thanks to Sterling Children's Books for the review copy of If You Had Your Birthday Party on the Moon!

One little note:

Today is my 13th bloggiversary at Bookfoolery. I usually don't say much about it — I usually just post a picture of a slice of cake with the right number of candles (or number-shaped candles) beneath a photo and a few words about the anniversary of D-Day. But, I forgot to make or buy cake and I feel a little speechless at the thought that this is the 75th anniversary of the landing at Normandy. I was born less than 20 years after the end of WWII, watched the first moon walk from the dining table on a tiny black-and-white TV, and I remember the end of the Vietnam War.

Even in blog years, I'm feeling old. 13 years ago, I had a child in junior high and one working on his first college degree. Now, my eldest child has 4 (yes, 4!) university degrees, a wife, and two children. My youngest has just set a wedding date and is finishing up his second degree. We do love learning in this family. Both of my grown children are avid readers and that is, I think, the best thing about my life. I raised two readers. Bloggiversaries make me all sappy, obviously. To those who are still reading my blog, I appreciate you!

©2019 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.

4 comments:

  1. 13 years feels like such a long time ago! My daughter was in college when I started mine and now she's celebrating 6 years of her blog/business and is getting married in a few months! We are part of the old-timer's tribe, aren't we? Congrats. I still read your blog, but don't comment as often as I ought to.

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    1. I know. It feels like ages. But, it went by so quickly!!!! Yes, we are definitely from the early days of blogging. So many of the people we hung out with have given it up. I will always miss the camaraderie of the early years but it's nice to still have a place to spill about books. Thanks! I'm glad you still drop by. I do the same. I often read but don't comment.

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  2. I became a blogger a few months after you did. I even stole your cake picture for my 12th blogiversary (click link below, if you've forgotten it). Yes, you are getting old-er, but I'm so old I can remember my daddy going off to the Army in December 1944 when they finally drafted daddies like mine. Just for the record, I was born in 1940, making me 79 now. Yikes, that's really, really old.

    https://bonniesbooks.blogspot.com/2019/01/blogiversary-twelve-years.html

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    1. I remember you using my cake photo because you politely asked (which I appreciate — occasionally people have "borrowed" my material without asking). OK, thanks. I feel younger, now. :)

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