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Behind the Book

They say write what you know, but there was a lot that I didn’t know—a lot that I needed to learn—when I began work on Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11. That was all right by me, though. The books I most enjoy making aren’t about things I know, but about things I want to know. The time spent learning about the first Moon landing—with books, and photographs, films, models, and Web sites, too—was time I appreciated. That’s not to say there weren’t a few long days chasing down details, especially details for the drawings. To write that the astronauts floated inside the Command Module is one thing, for instance, but to create an original and accurate image of the inside of that strange ship required assembling many pieces of information, from many different sources. Almost every page of Moonshot offered some puzzle like that. 

And what made those puzzles enjoyable? What made me want to make Moonshot in the first place? First, some things that are easy to explain: the steady astronauts, the fantastic and powerful machines, the thrill of the voyage, the sense of history, the satisfaction of a goal met. Then, too, some things not so easy to explain. There’s something mysteriously beautiful to me in Apollo 11’s journey, in that trip out from home, out through emptiness, out to a place as familiar yet foreign as the Moon. A voyage first to the incredible, and then, hopefully, to home again—but a home seen differently and understood differently because of the trip. I find a sense of wonder in the subject that remains fresh for me no matter how many times I go back to it, and I’ve never felt so happy or so lucky to be able to work on a book as I did while working on Moonshot.

I hope that comes through in the book. I hope readers find the excitement and science and history of Apollo 11 in Moonshot, and those other feelings, too—something that stirs for them their own sense of the extraordinary.