Overview
Heroism in outer space is the legacy of the lunar mission Apollo 13. On April 11, 1970, astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert were launched into space as the crew of Apollo 13. Their mission, like the missions of Apollo 11 and Apollo 12, was to explore the lunar surface. But that mission was never completed. As they began the procedure for landing on the Moon, the spacecraft was rocked by a violent explosion. Oxygen began pouring out of the Service Module, and the spacecraft began to lose power. Jim Lovell radioed Mission Control with the now-famous words, "Houston, we have a problem." All over the world, people followed the plight of the astronauts. Richard Hilliard examines the crisis of Apollo 13, one of the great survival stories of the space age, in a lively text and dramatic illustrations.
Editorials
School Library Journal
Gr 2-4
The author of Godspeed, John Glenn (Boyds Mills, 2006) and other accounts of space-program highlights describes the disastrous Apollo 13 mission for younger readers. With a combination of brief overview narrative, more detailed sidebar explanations, and full- or nearly full-spread paintings done in a realistic style, Hilliard covers the basic facts in a systematic way, but he writes in a wooden, matter-of-fact tone that robs the episode of much of its terror and suspense. For example, "Jim's wife, Marilyn, stayed in constant contact with Houston and hoped that, against all odds, her husband would return to her and their children." Similarly, the figures in the paintings are usually in static poses, often seen from the back or with faces in shadow. The important task of making children aware of our achievements in space exploration needs all the help it can get, but is better served by more vivid retellings, such as Ian Graham's You Wouldn't Want to Be on Apollo 13! (Watts, 2003) or Mark Beyer's Crisis in Space: Apollo 13 (Children's Press, 2002).-John Peters, New York Public Library