"Where Once We Stood" by Christopher Riley and Martin Impey did something I wish a lot more history books would do. Rather than resorting to 'gross out' hooks to appeal to kids, this book chose to storify the real-life missions of the Apollo astronauts, describing the very human stories and how the astronauts themselves felt during each mission.
We've seen a heck of a lot of books that go into exquisite technical detail about the exploration of space, but this one stuck in the mind because of the amazing way Christopher and Martin worked together to bring forward those human tales, presented in such a gorgeous way, and utterly immersive - so much so that it feels like you're right there in the minds of those plucky astronauts as they take their first faltering steps on the surface of the moon.
We were lucky enough to visit Cape Kennedy last year, and spent an entire day just walking around awe-struck - at the tech but also at the way the place presents those stories in various exhibits and anecdotes accompanying the dizzyingly brilliant engineering feats that got us all the way to that distant ball of dust and rock. I think this was the first time we'd seen that perfectly captured in book form, and this is most definitely one of our most treasured space books.
Original Review Link:
ReadItDaddy's Second Space-tastic Book of the Week - Week Ending 19th July 2019: "Where Once We Stood" by Christopher Riley and Martin Impey (Harbour Moon Publishing)