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Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Countdown 2979 Days to the Moon by Suzanne Slade and Thomas Gonzalez

Countdown 2979 Days to the Moon 
by Suzanne Slade and Thomas Gonzalez
Expected Publication Sept. 1, 2018
Peachtree Publishers
144 pages
Nonfiction
Review copy provided by publisher

Goodreads Summary
Free verse and illustrations tell the true story of the American effort to land the first man on the Moon.
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced that the United States would try to land a man on the Moon within ten years. During the two thousand, nine hundred and seventy-nine days that followed his speech, eighteen astronauts climbed into spaceships; three of them died before even leaving the ground. Eight rockets soared into space. And four hundred thousand people--engineers, technicians, scientists, mathematicians, and machinists--joined Project Apollo in hopes of making the dream a reality.


My Thoughts
I will admit that I normally shy away from nonfiction that is longer than a picture book. It is just not a genre I am drawn to.  I received this book from Peachtree in exchange for my honest thoughts. I was immediately drawn in to the story. The story itself was compelling. I was familiar with Apollo 11 and the first Moon landing of course, but I had no idea about the first 10 Apollo missions and all that went into the US's quest to put the first person on the moon. Before I knew it, I had finished it in one sitting. 
I found the free verse format very appealing and will make the book accessible to a wide-range of readers. The book itself is a bit larger (10"X10") with a mixture of beautiful illustrations and original photographs. 
I would recommend this book for grades 4-7. It would be fun to read it aloud to students a little each day as they see how the events unfold. 

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