Astronaut Alan Bean was the fourth person to walk on the moon. He was also an artist. After he returned to Earth, he had trouble describing the experience to friends, and felt photographs didn’t do justice to the moon’s landscape. His first painting of the moon “didn’t look exactly real. But Alan didn’t want it to. The painting showed how stunning outer space looked through his eyes. How it made him feel.” He went on to make many paintings, sometimes stamping them with his astronaut boots, scratching them with the tools he’d used on the moon, or sprinkling them with moon dust. This inspiring picture-book account shows how Bean, whose career as an astronaut was grounded in science and technology, found art essential to expressing and sharing what it meant to him. More about Alan Bean, a timeline, and several of his paintings and photos on which they are based are included at volume’s end. (Ages 6–9)

Journey to the moon on the Apollo 12 mission with Alan Bean, the fourth astronaut to walk on the lunar surface and the only artist to paint its beauty firsthand!

As a boy, Alan wanted to fly planes. As a young navy pilot, Alan wished he could paint the view from the cockpit. So he took an art class to learn patterns and forms. But no class could prepare him for the beauty of the lunar surface some 240,000 miles from Earth. In 1969, Alan became the fourth man and first artist on the moon. He took dozens of pictures, but none compared to what he saw through his artistic eyes. When he returned to Earth, he began to paint what he saw. Alan's paintings allowed humanity to experience what it truly felt like to walk on the moon. Journalist and storyteller Dean Robbins's tale of this extraordinary astronaut is masterful, and artist Sean Rubin's illustrations are whimsical and unexpected. With back matter that includes photos of the NASA mission, images of Alan's paintings, and a timeline of lunar space travel, this is one adventure readers won't want to miss!