This year is the 50th anniversary of the Moon Landing when man walked on the Moon for the first time.
"It was one small step for a man…and one giant leap for mankind.’
When Apollo 11 blasts off for the Moon, the whole world is watching. On the other side of the planet, Billy, Mickey and Buzz decide to be astronauts too...
In a sheep paddock near Billy's house stood 'The Dish', one of the largest telescopes on Earth that astronomers use to track space missions and faraway galaxies. Billy loves space and wishes he could fly to the Moon like the astronauts on Apollo 11. As it gets closer to the Moon Landing, Billy builds models of the Saturn V rocket and Command and Lunar Modules. He teaches Mickey and Buzz how to be astronauts and they have fun making shiny foil space suits, collecting 'moon rocks' and practising lunar gravity in the bath!
In their very own Command Module they eat chocolate pudding and astronaut ice-cream as they blast off into space...
It felt like the stars were whizzing by.
The moon hung
like a silver ball,
glowing and growing
bigger and brighter...
Closer and closer.
and Billy, Mickey and Buzz go Moonwalking and bouncing and leaping as they explore the Moon until they drift off safely into astronaut dreams.
What a fabulous team effort by Mark Greenwood and Terry Denton to create Moonwalkers! The Apollo 11 mission captured the world's imagination and Mark and Terry have delightfully captured Billy and his siblings' imagination, creativity and fun being Moonwalkers.
At the end of the book, Terry has also illustrated the successful Apollo 11 Mission - to put humans on the Moon and return them safely to Earth.
The whole world was watching on July 16, 1969 as Apollo 11 blasted off into space carrying three astronauts headed for the Moon. Three days later on July 20, (July 21 in Australia) an estimated 600 million people watched Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon. I had just turned five and can still remember all the students from my little country school in Guyra, NSW all excitedly squashed into a little room in front of a small black and white television to watch the Moon Landing and history in the making.
Ian Sutton [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]
Australia had a special part to play in the Moon Landing with our large radio telescope in Parkes, NSW nick named 'The Dish' and the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station in Canberra. 'The Dish' helped to beam photos of the moon walk around the world. In fact, Australian audiences saw Neil Armstrong's historic first step 0.3 seconds before the rest of the world. You can read about it HERE
Happy reading!
Teacher notes
