WHEN I WAS A BABY, I WENT UP TO SPACE
by Ezra Dutch Kimsly ; illustrated by Mike Cañas
Backyard hijinks send a baby on a brief trip into space in Kimsly’s picture book.
When big sister Grace, who has fair skin and brown hair, ties her baby sibling’s highchair to a tree branch, neither she nor the baby are prepared for the baby to get flung into space. Among the stars, the baby spots a bear (Ursa Major) and then a giant toucan that looks quite a lot like the Hubble Space Telescope. Soon, the ISS and some top-hat wearing astronauts come into view, followed by the moon, which is eating a hamburger. After spotting the cow, the dish, and the spoon (and an asteroid-residing alien named Lloyd), the baby heads back toward Earth, to the disappointment of the heavenly bodies: “The last thing I saw, my brief trip winding down, were the planets and Sun, waving bye with a frown.” Kimsly’s stanzas scan well, with consistent and inventive rhymes likely to stretch the vocabulary of even advanced readers (the moon is “gaining girth,” and Lloyd is a “chummy alien”). The story’s humor is effective—Pluto asking “Hey guys, am I in or out?” will amuse parents who grew up with nine planets to name. Cañas’ cartoon illustrations, which embrace the silliness of the text, feature painterly backgrounds to depict the space voyage.
A giggle-worthy, whimsical adventure.