The Astronaut Who Painted the Moon
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!
Presented in partnership with the Wisconsin Science Festival.
Dean Robbins
Dean Robbins is the award-winning author of the nonfiction children’s picture books Two Friends: Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass (Scholastic); Miss Paul and the President: The Creative Campaign for Women’s Right to Vote (Knopf); Margaret and the Moon: How Margaret Hamilton Saved the First Lunar Landing (Knopf); and The Astronaut Who Painted the Moon: The True Story of Alan Bean (Scholastic). His books have been featured on National Public Radio; praised in The New York Times, USA Today, Smithsonian, and other publications; received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Kirkus Reviews; and chosen for best-of-the-year honors by Smithsonian, Space.com, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, and the Children’s Book Council, among others. Two Friends was adapted as a short film by Weston Woods Studios, with narration by Dion Graham of The Wire. Robbins is also a veteran journalist and has interviewed the subjects of his children’s books, including Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean and NASA’s pioneering computer scientist Margaret Hamilton.