NEIL ARMSTRONG

Fame and accomplishment come easily to an astronaut.

During a childhood visit with his father to an airfield full of propeller planes, Armstrong was inspired. He knew that he wanted to fly and earned his pilot’s license at age 16. He fought during the Korean War, earning three Air Medals, and then became a test pilot and joined NASA, where he was selected for the first moon mission. In July 1969, he became the first person to walk on the surface of the moon. In July 1969, he became the first person to walk on the surface of the moon (in a reference to Armstrong's famous quote, the text reads, “It was one small step for a man but a giant leap for humankind”). The author concludes her brief, positive highlights of Armstrong’s life with an overview of the worldwide fame that followed the mission. All the faces in the colorful illustrations feature big smiles with the exception of a scene in the spacecraft when a technical glitch causes two astronauts to grimace. The people depicted are mostly light-skinned, though one illustration shows three brown-skinned women walking together at NASA headquarters and another shows a brown-skinned family watching the moon landing on TV. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

An easily accessible biography of a notable 20th-century American.