ALA Booklist

For young readers fascinated with the real history of space travel, this simple, clear, and attractively illustrated book is a great place to begin. Using two-page spreads that are half text, half image, the story of July 20, 1969, and the moon landing of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin is related in short sentences that tread the line between informational (details of the Eagle include "Its outer walls thinner than human skin") and poetic (the moon's surface is described as "like a battlefield from some ancient war"). The landing is tense, the frolicking on the moon amusing, but most welcome is the realistic portrayal of the exhaustion and trepidation that occur after the moon walk is finished. The feathery, impressionistic paintings alternate between hues of blue (the moon) and green (the cockpit) and utilize unusual high or low perspectives to accentuate the drama. The only thing missing is historical context, and Burleigh's author's note takes care of that quite nicely.

Horn Book

This picture book collaboration successfully captures the tension, excitement, and national pride as Armstrong and Aldrin descend the ladder of the Eagle onto the surface of the moon. Wimmer's rich oils and broad palette provide spot-on drama for Burleigh's poetic text. An author's note underscores the achievement and its history while speculating about future space exploration.

Kirkus Reviews

With customarily heightened language, Burleigh's lengthy free-verse poem describes the moments between the landing of the Eagle on the lunar surface and the Columbia 's return to "fragile, beautiful home." In sentences rarely longer than a line, the present-tense text provides an almost sportscasterly narration of the events: "[Armstrong] jumps to the landing leg's round footpad. / He holds on. He pauses. He points his right foot and steps off." The slow cadence should build excitement, but somehow the accretion of minutiae bogs this account down instead of giving young readers graspable details to relish. The line-after-line look of this poem, with few breaks to assist in pacing, results in an undifferentiated emotional tone that gives the narrative lie to such lines as, "They feel part of something so much larger than themselves." Wimmer's heroic full-bleed paintings employ a midnight-blue palette and feature largely unsurprising compositions. Taken together, text and illustrations make this one to skip over in a season chock-full of moon landings. (Informational picture book. 6-10)

School Library Journal

Gr 1-3 Distinguished language and compelling imagery make this commemoration of the first Moon landing's 40th anniversary particularly intense. In characteristically dramatic free verse, Burleigh begins with the descent of the Eagle and the tense search for a safe spot to land. He describes the two astronauts' first impressions of the "endless, mysterious wasteland" all around, follows Armstrong and Aldrin down the ladder as they take those historic first steps and then, all too soon, come back aboard for an uncomfortable night, a suspenseful takeoff ("No backing up. No doing it again. No second try./They know one thing only: failure means death"), the rendezvous with Michael Collins and the Columbia , and the triumphant return to "Earth: fragile, beautiful, home." Greenish light lends an eldritch glow to Wimmer's full-page, sometimes full-spread close-up views of the lunar landscape, the three absorbed astronauts, and their accurately rendered gear and spacecraft. The sense of immediacy is irresistible and will cause children who consider the event just ancient history to feel as if they too had left footprints on that distant, dusty surface. John Peters, New York Public Library