Space has definitely been 'a thing' on this blog. We are an entire family of space nuts, and during the amazing 50th Anniversary celebrations of the first landing on the moon we were lucky enough to be sent a truly amazing book to review.

"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)

Our second Space-tastic book of the week themed around the moon landings 50 years ago is more than just a selection of facts presented in a fairly cold and sterile manner.

"Where Once We Stood" by Christopher Riley and Martin Impey instantly feels more personal and more human, more or less as soon as you delve into the book.

It tells the story of the 12 brave men who boarded rockets, blasting off to land on the moon. Each mission tinged with uncertainty, danger and risk - but each mission now etched into human history as a set of truly remarkable achievements.

The book begins by showing the landing locations for the missions (including, of course, the epoch-making Apollo 11 mission - celebrating its 50th Anniversary tomorrow), but then becomes more storified as we begin to hear the details of each mission from the communications chatter and anecdotal information provided by the astronauts themselves, brilliantly brought together with Christopher's writing, and Martin's truly stunning illustrations.

Here then, we don't just get a sense of the technical achiements, and the colossal scale of the operation put in place to bring our Astronauts safely home, but we get a sense that for those 12 men, this was something far different to the norm, far more exciting, challenging and life changing than anything else they'd ever encounter in their lives.

Space fascinates us still, and with renewed talk of returning to the moon - this time perhaps as a stepping stone to reaching out further into space, these really are amazingly detailed accounts of each mission, and the book is just so gorgeously presented that it instantly feels like it'd make a fantastic family heirloom to pass down to generations, making sure they all know what it took to put those men on the moon.

Sum this book up in a sentence: A fascinating deep dive into the human stories around each of the amazing moon missions, starting of course with Apollo 11 and our first tentative steps on another world.

"Where Once We Stood" by Christopher Riley and Martin Impey is out now, published by Harbour Moon Publishing (kindly supplied for review).