Yaccarino (Big Brother Mike) brings an effervescent perspective to moon exploration for the youngest astronaut wannabes in this breezy flight of fancy. A boy astronaut climbs into a bulging, oversized orange spacesuit and seats himself in front of a wide control console. Turning the book sideways shows the platform as last-minute procedures commence: "Countdown counting.../ Excitement mounting.../ ...Lift off!/ Boosters blast!/ Moving fast./ Engines roaring./ Rocket soaring." As the rocket travels upward, the text climbs diagonally across the page and diminishes in size as though getting farther away; elsewhere, chunky yellow or red type stands out brightly against starry dark-blue skies and the putty-gray lunar surface, with a quality of weightlessness that mimics the boy astronaut. On the way to the moon, he takes care to "just avoid the asteroids" and, once there, collects "moon rocks in a box" and witnesses a dramatic "Earthrise" before heading back home. The snappy rhyming narrative and cosmic double-page spreads cover the essentials from takeoff to splashdown, leaving the technical details for more experienced cosmonauts. Instead, Yaccarino creates a moon visit that budding scientists can use as a launch pad for their own imaginations. Ages 2-6. (Sept.)
PreS-K--A boy's trip to the moon and home again is told in a simple rhyming text, "First, space suit,/then, space boot." Artwork rendered in alkyds on watercolor paper is painted in lush colors and fills the page. Pictures in a stylized manner reminiscent of `30s art illustrate the scenes, enriching the fantasy element of the story. Text is placed within illustrations, successfully leading the eye and complementing the narrative. "Lights winking./Panels blinking./Buttons and dials/Count the miles" are words that become part of the instrument panel, adding movement to the page as they are read. This title is suited for independent reading or as a read-aloud. Zoom! Zoom! Zoom! can be teamed with Jill Murphy's What Next, Baby Bear? (Dial, 1986) and Nina Crews's I'll Catch the Moon (Greenwillow, 1996) for a lunar storytime.--Susan M. Moore, Louisville Free Public Library, KY
With infectious excitement, a young child bounds through his door, into a rocket and off to the moon. The short, rhymed text, replete with exclamation points, pounds away like a rapid heartbeat—"Boosters blast!/Moving fast./Engines roaring./Rocket soaring"—while the young traveler, resembling the Michelin Man in his huge, orange spacesuit, tumbles about in free fall, watches the earth rise from the lunar surface, then waves at the crowds celebrating his return before bounding back into his parents' arms, and to bed. Using hot, shimmeringly intense hues that shift from spread to spread, Yaccarino (If I Had a Robot, 1996, etc.) creates big, simple paintings so energetic they practically need to be held down; this is his most emphatic crowd pleaser since Eve Merriam's Bam Bam Bam
