Book Review: The Man Who Went to the Far Side of the Moon by Bea Uusma Schyffert

The Man Who Went to the Far Side of the Moon
by Bea Uusma Schyffert (j629.45 Sch)

This little gem of Apollo 11 Moon mission history is intended for middle graders but I found it informative and enjoyable, especially from the perspective of a ‘senior’ adult who witnessed the event via television as a 9-year-old. It combines photographs, quotes, drawings, comparison charts, mission data, and quick facts — all with an emphasis on the “The Story of Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins” per the subtitle. Collins had the responsibility of piloting the command capsule multiple times around the moon while Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin landed on the surface and walked into epic history. Originally published in Sweden in 1999, just 30 years after the Moon Landing, this American edition came out in 2003. If you are at all interested in the space program (NASA in particular), the lives of astronauts, the history of technology, or anything associated with the “Right Stuff”, this is a wonderful presentation of it.

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try I Love You, Michael Collins by Lauren Baratz-Logsted, Apollo, The Epic Journey to the Moon by David West Reynolds or Apollo 11 directed by Douglas Miller.)

 

( Wikipedia page for Bea Uusma )

 

Recommended by Becky W.C.
Walt Branch Library

Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

 

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

DVD Review: From the Earth to the Moon

From the Earth to the Moon

(DVD From)

 

I first saw this award-winning mini-series on HBO (had to first subscribe then I unsubscribed as soon as this series was over). Each segment aired weekly and I was in front of my TV with my VCR recording each one. When the DVD came out I bought that version as well. I was surprised to see no one at the library had yet reviewed this excellent series.

 

Based on A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin, this is one of my favorite shows about the space program, and mostly covers the Apollo Program. Each episode, introduced by Tom Hanks (except for the final one), is about a specific segment of the space race to the moon beginning with President Kennedy’s speech through the last of the Apollo flights. Along the way we learn about building the lunar lander (“Spider”) – this was so fascinating, personal, and humorous, who knew we’d care? – and a segment from the wives’ perspectives (“The Original Wives Club”).

 

The final disc is Bonus Material: the original trailers, Behind-the-Scenes, Special Effects, JFK’s speech, History of the Moon, interesting facts about space beyond our solar system, and famous astronomers.

 

The performances are excellent and they draw you right into the various stories. The soundtrack is ideal and sets the tone as well. If you decide to binge this in one sitting, set aside 12 hours (not including the Bonus disc).

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Apollo 13.)

 

(Also available — the Chaikin book that inspired this, in traditional print format.)

 

( Internet Movie Database entry for this series )

 

See the One Small Step booklist on BookGuide, featuring a massive list of materials — fiction and non-fiction — about the Apollo program!

 

Recommended by Charlotte M.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you watched this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

DVD Review: When We Were Apollo

When We Were Apollo

(DVD 629.454 Whe)

 

For anyone interested in the United States history of the Space Race, this documentary is a must-see. As someone who has always been interested in the space program and NASA, I found this film to be a fascinating look at the men and women who made every mission possible. Growing up in the 1960s and watching each mission to the moon and back, it was interesting to me to see old news reels of each event interspersed with clips of major news events that were happening simultaneously with the space program and their effect on each other. I was especially moved by the interviews with men and women who were part of the program to land a man on the moon and hear their memories first-hand. It is important that we should remember the accomplishments of these people at a time when our country was in a technological war with the former Soviet Union in its efforts to get ahead in the space race. We still have many people alive today who can provide first-person accounts of the advancements made in the early years of NASA; now is the time to record those memories for future generations to learn from.

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Apollo 13 or Hidden Figures.)

 

( Internet Movie Database entry for this film ) | ( official When We Were Apollo Twitter feed )

 

Recommended by Kim J.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you watched this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

Book Review: A Rover's Story by Jasmine Warga (second review on BookGuide)

A Rover’s Story
by Jasmine Warga (j Warga)

A Rover’s Story is from the perspective of a Mars rover’s inner life as he is built and tested on Earth, then as he works on multiple missions on Mars. He can understand the humans around him, but they never realize he’s sentient; other technology is another matter. Several technological characters can chat with each other, all of them having some level of personal willpower beyond their programming.

A second perspective comes from the daughter of one of the engineers. Starting in middle grade and continuing through college, Sophia writes letters to the rover. Occasionally, another character will actually read the letters to him, but the point of this part of the narrative is to show the time taken for such a long mission and how it can affect a family that has their own terrestrial struggles to deal with.

This is cute, comforting story with occasional mild tension that should do good things for children’s interest in robotic solar system exploration.

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try The Wishtree by Katherine Applegate, or The Wild Robot by Peter Brown.)

Recommended by Garren H.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

Book Review: A Rover's Story by Jasmine Warga

A Rover’s Story

by Jasmine Warga (j Warga)

I was unprepared for the emotional journey that this middle-grade novel took me on. I initially checked it out based solely on the charming cover image, and the jacket blurb description: “Meet Resilience, a Mars rover determined to live up to his name. Res was built to explore Mars. He was not built to have human emotions. But as he learns new things from the NASA scientists who assemble him, be begins to develop human-like feelings. Maybe there’s a problem with his programming…”

 

This story, told from the point of view of Resilience (“Res”), goes from his first moments of awareness as computer software, to the assembly of his highly mobile body, to his journey to Mars, in the company of a flying drove he nicknames “Fly”, and ultimately back to Earth. The characters range from Res, Fly and Guardian (a satellite in orbit around Mars that assists in Res’ mission), to the team of scientists responsible for designed and building Res, which includes music-loving and joke-telling Xander, and super-serious Arabic-speaking Rania. Interspersed among Res’ regular “diary-like” updates are letters written to Resilience by Rania’s young daughter, Sophia.

 

Though Resilience, Fly, Guardian (and Res’ twin Journey) don’t actually exist, they are so similar to real-life Martian rovers such as Curiosity, Perseverance, Opportunity, Spirit and the Chinese rover Zhurong that the reader really feels the “reality” of Res and its mission. The fact that Res has developed elementary human characteristics and feelings (and doesn’t understand them very well, and is led by other mechanical devices to believe these are flaws), leads to both humor and highly-emotional moments in this story. To say more would be to spoil the reading experience.

 

Suffice it to say, this was an excellent story, told well, and would be a great addition to a middle schooler’s STEM readings. But even I, an adult nearing 60, enjoyed the storytelling. Of particular note: An author’s afterword talks about the real-life science that inspired this fictional story.

 

(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try the animated film WALL-E and the live-action film Silent Running (not in library collection…try InterLibrary Loan).)

 

( official A Rover’s Story page on the official Jasmine Warga web site )

 

Postscript: I also recommend the documentary "Good Night Oppy", which played in theaters for one week in early November 2022, and will be available on Amazon Prime (which produced the film) by the end of the November. This is a documentary about the real-life Mars Rovers Opportunity and Spirit, which inspired author Warga to write the story of Resilience.

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

Music Book Review: The Vinyl Frontier: The Story of the Voyager Golden Record by Jonathan Scott

The Vinyl Frontier: The Story of the Voyager Golden Record
by Jonathan Scott (Music 780.266 Sco)

 

Remember making mix tapes? Maybe you made mix CDs or playlists, depending on your age. Whatever the medium, I’m sure you can remember how painstaking this process can be, picking just the right songs for that right person or occasion. You could spend days getting a tape just right!

 

Now imagine having to come up with the ultimate mix tape, one that can introduce the inhabitants of Planet Earth to anyone else who might be our neighbors in the universe. This was essentially the task given to Carl Sagan and his committee in the creation of the Voyager Golden Record, created to send along with the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft, in hopes that some future civilization might stumble upon these vessels on their journey into deep space. The project of creating these records was originally documented in the 1978 book Murmurs of Earth, which has long been out of print, but a new book tells the story in even more detail.

 

Jonathan Scott’s The Vinyl Frontier: The Story of the Voyager Golden Record combines biographical information on Carl Sagan, historical information on the Voyager missions, and a lot of philosophical pondering regarding how anyone can decide how to represent an entire civilization’s character and history on a single side of a slow-playing record. Noted ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax was involved with the committee, as was Robert E. Brown of the Centre for World Music and conductor Murray Sidlin. Languages and images from Earth were also represented on the Golden Record, creating more painstaking decisions, and Scott recounts these choices as well, even describing how images were converted to be represented in sound waves. Many ordinary citizens were brought to Cornell to record greetings in a wide variety of world languages, and as you’ll find out in the book, the diversity of languages they were able to represent on the record far exceeded their initial goals.

 

This is a great book for thinking about music and culture on a cosmically significant level, but you’ll also find much to love here if you’re interested in the golden age of space exploration. Voyager 1 and 2 have made it to interstellar space now, and no matter how our civilization evolves or devolves from here, we have forever launched a snapshot of the way we were in 1977 into the cosmos.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Spotify Teardown: Inside the Black Box of Streaming Music by Maria Eriksson.]

[ publisher’s official The Vinyl Frontier web site ] | [ official Jonathan Scott web site ]

 

Recommended by Scott S.
Polley Music Library

 

Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

Check out this, and all the other great music resources, at the Polley Music Library, located on the 2nd floor of the Bennett Martin Public Library at 14th & "N" St. in downtown Lincoln. You'll find biographies of musicians, books about music history, instructional books, sheet music, CDs, music-related magazines, and much more. Also check out Polley Music Library Picks, the Polley Music Library's e-mail newsletter, and follow them on Facebook!