The vampires are here, and they're the good guys

Young Readers

Peeps

Scott Westerfeld

If You Decide to Go to the Moon

Faith McNulty, ill. by Steven Kellogg

Scholastic / ages 4-8

If you decide to go to the moon, and you're a second-grader or younger, this is your travel guide. The familiarity of Steven Kellogg's illustrating style matches the lift-off world, which appears to be just on the other side of a green field nearby to anywhere and anyone. And for astronauts young enough to want games and books and peanut butter, that familiarity is comforting. Yet Kellogg also offers brilliant looks at the unfamiliar, the darkness of space itself. Faith McNulty's text incorporates a great deal of scientifically accurate detail, but she has an ear for how children might see this new world, whether it's the squeeze bottles or the lunar dust. The rocket ship owes more to a child's imagination than to NASA, but the overall combination seems real and particular, especially as it asks the reader to think about what air and water do for us on this planet.

Mary Harris Russell teaches English at Indiana University Northwest. She wrote this article for the Chicago Tribune.