Zoom, Rocket, Zoom!

This onomatopoeic celebration of space exploration shows off what a team of astronauts, as well as their equipment, are capable of after a rocket launches into space. As in these collaborators’ Stomp, Dinosaur, Stomp! the text is dominated by energetic sound effects and action words: “Lift off! Launching!/ Whoo-oom!/ Up they go, zooming./ Blasting into space.” The free-flowing verse is set into Ayliffe’s chunky cut-paper collages whose bright colors give the book an exuberant sense of adventure. The typography (which varies in size to emphasize the sound effects and verbs) zigzags across the page, as if free from gravity itself. Different vehicles and apparatus are introduced, along with descriptions of what each is “good at”: “Moon buggies are good at roll, roll, rolling,/ round wheels turning, soft dust gripping,/ across the humpy, lumpy moon... bumpety-bumping./ Exploring up in space.” A lunar module, space shuttle, space station, space satellite, robot spacecraft, and robot rover are also spotlighted; their images are reproduced on the endpapers, presenting a guessing-game opportunity. A diverting mix of fact and fancy. Ages 3–6. (May)