Dad and Me

For one first grader, a day important in America goes from good to bad to good again June 3, 1965 ---- the first American space walk. And for Tommy, a chance to listen to the event, live, with his father. But Dad has an important meeting and can't be home in time. That's all right. Tommy can wait till the evening news, just as he can wait to become an astronaut someday, when all his space games with Dad and their walkie--talkies will become real. Later, at school, the kids go to the Large Group Room to watch Gemini Four lift off. The front page of the afternoon paper carries an artist's rendering of the space walk, and the picture inspires Tommy, after school, to draw on his imagination. He's floating deep in space until ---- Beeeep! Dad's home! Beeeep! But Tommy's left his bike in the driveway. And Dad is in a bad mood. He's hunched behind the wheel, uninterested in any space walk now. All the scarier, Dad seems to have become his car: cold, closed off, roaring. That's how Tommy sees the homecoming: Dad's beyond reach. Until, wonderfully, the man reads his boy loud and clear, as if a walkie--talkie has crackled to life. This is a book about father--son feeling, revealed in heartfelt words and pictures of inventive vitality (the spreads of Dad--as--car are extraordinary) in which space symbolizes both distance and shared dream.