MOON LANDING

One might think that a pop-up would be the perfect vehicle for a book about Apollo 11—but Columbia this ain’t. Well-chosen facts are obscured by poor design and occasionally mystifying graphics. The origins of the space program quickly give way to the meat of the matter: rocket design, space suits and the landing itself. Readers will get a graphically satisfying answer to the perennial question, “How did they go to the bathroom?” But a pop-up illustration of the lunar module adaptor in which a rocket seems to fly into the compartment holding the Eagle is just plain baffling, and a dramatic 3-D model of the moon apparently necessitates a subsequent, plain black page that contributes nothing. A shame. (Pop-up/nonfiction. 8-12)