In the summer of 1969, young Mae feels growing anticipation as the hour for the moon landing draws near. “A spaceship would land on the moon today, / And I dreamed that maybe one day, / I could go to the moon, too.” Mae and her cousins pretend to be the astronauts, and she is full of facts to share—about the moon being 240,000 miles away, and about President Kennedy’s declaration in 1961 that America would land on the moon. As the family gathers around the television to watch Neil Armstrong take the first steps on the moon, even Mae’s grandpa, who thinks money spent on the space program could do so much more good here on earth, seems impressed. “I reckon that’s something to remember,” he says. As for Mae, it’s something to inspire dreams. Dianna Hutts Aston’s poetic narrative is set against Jerry Pinkney’s stirring graphite, ink and watercolor illustrations in which scenes of African American Mae and her family are interspersed with the vision of her imagination and the astronauts’ experiences in space. (Ages 7–10)

In July 1969, the world witnessed an awe-inspiring historical achievement when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the moon. For the young protagonist of this lyrical and hopeful picture book, that landing is something that inspires her to make one giant step toward all of the possibilities that life has to offer.

Caldecott Honor–winning painter Jerry Pinkney and the poetic Dianna Hutts Aston create a moving tribute to the historic Apollo 11 Mission, just in time to commemorate its upcoming fortieth anniversary.