Mission: Moon

By Andrea J. Loney and Wendy Tan

Abby is taking a giant leap onto the lunar surface.

On a field trip to the moon, Abby is excited to try low-gravity bouncing and lunar rover rides. Unfortunately, her friend Gracie's older sister Claire is seriously spoiling the mood with her constant criticism of Abby. When Abby accidentally gets her friends trapped in an abandoned lab, she starts to wonder if Claire is right after all. Can Abby prove her wrong, escape the lab, and do something extra interstellar on the moon?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
• Release date: Apr 10, 2024
• ISBN: 9780807504215

Andrea J. Loney

Andrea J. Loney won a Lee & Low New Voices Award and an NAACP Image Award nomination for her picture book Take a Picture of Me, James Van Der Zee! Her picture book Bunnybear was featured on the ALA Rainbow List, and her picture book Double Bass Blues won a Caldecott Honor for illustrator Rudy Gutierrez. Her work can also be found in the critically acclaimed children’s poetry anthology No Voice Too Small: Fourteen Young Americans Making History. Her upcoming books include the picture book biography Curve and Flow: The Elegant Vision of LA Architect Paul R. Williams. A second-generation Girl Scout, a huge spreadsheet fan, and an avid voter, Andrea graduated from New York University with an MFA in dramatic writing. She’s traveled with the Big Apple Circus and worked for the Walt Disney Company. Now she teaches computer science courses at a local community college and writing courses for organizations across the country. Andrea lives in Los Angeles, California, with her towering stacks of children’s books, her devoted family, and their incredibly spoiled pets.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

A Sticky Situation

Abby…Abby…Mission Control to Abby ‘Moondrop’ Baxter, do you copy?

Sorry Papa, I said as I looked up from the new present Mami had given me that morning. It was a rainbow star sticker. But not just any kind of rainbow star and not just any kind of sticker. It was a holographic photo sticker of a real star. As it floated in the microgravity, different colors rippled across its surface.

This is Sirius, or the Dog Star, Mami had said when she gave me the sticker. I first saw it through a telescope in the Griffith Observatory when I was about your age.

Mami had told me that the real Sirius was an actual factual rainbow star. But it only looks like it changes colors—really, it’s always the same color.

All this time, there was a real rainbow star out there in the universe and I didn’t even know! What else didn’t I know?

In my first year living on the International Space Station OASIS, the biggest thing I’d learned about science is that I have about 750 percent more to learn. There were things I didn’t even know I didn’t know. Would I ever be able to squish them all inside my brain?

Ahem! Papa was at our home pod window, pointing towards the moon, As I was saying, I set up the underground 3D printing lab way down there at the lunar south pole.

Nico pressed his sticky little hands against the glass. That’s where you made things out of moon dust, right Papa? Nico and Papa smiled at each other. Nico loved hearing Papa’s stories about his time on the moon. But to be 150 percent honest, whenever I looked at the moon, I mostly thought about the year Papa went on his lunar mission. I’d missed him so much, I used to stare at the moon and squint really hard to see if I could find him up there.

Just then, Mami brought out one of her favorite gifts from Papa—a chunky, heart-shaped moon rock he’d picked up just for her. Nico and I always got excited to see it.

Mira! Nico said, Moon rock! Can I hold it?

No, you cannot, Mami said. I keep this in a secret hiding place for a reason—it’s called a breccia rock, and it’s delicate.

Yeah, I told Nico. You have to wait until you’re older, like me.

Mami pulled it away from me too.

Not so fast, Mami said.

So when can we touch it? I asked Mami.

When you’re old enough to go to the moon and get one of your own, Mami said with a laugh and a wink towards Papa.