The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, by Eleanor CameronLittle, Brown, 1954

This book was written nearly a decade before the first manned space flight, three years before Sputnik was launched, at a time when space must have captured kids’ imaginations in a somewhat different way than it does now. The sense of possibility that fills this book makes it a pleasure to read, as do all the every-day details and speech patterns that seem quaint, fifty years later (phrases like “pleased as Punch” and “great jumping kadiddle fish!”, the fact that one character’s father, a doctor, makes house calls as part of his daily work). As with The Court of the Stone Children, I found myself wishing I could see the streets and houses and neighborhoods the characters move through (yes, I’m more curious about 1950s San Francisco than I am about the Mushroom Planet).