Reaching for the Moon : Lessons from the Chandrayaan Mission by Menaka Raman (Author) and Adrija Ghosh (Illustrator)
My take on the book:
After the success of Chandrayaan-3 when Dr Pacchai, collector of Theenkulam, Tamil Nadu announced a science fair at district level to celebrate the achievement, ten-year-old Valarmathi began dreaming of winning it. Along with her best friend Siva, Valarmathi decides to participate; the problem she is trying to solve is provide respite from the scorching heat in Theenkulam by creating artificial snow.
While the idea and her intention are praise-worthy, Valarmathi is upset when all her attempts to create snow start failing. What lessons will Valarmathi learn from Chandrayaan-3 mission and will she be able to achieve her goal before the science fair, forms the rest of the story.
As kids, all of us experienced similar phenomenon of schools and organizations conducting competitions right after any historic event in the country. Such events are meant to inspire and motivate young minds to dream of achieving similar goals and also to help them brainstorm new ideas and put them into action. Like in this story, Valarmathi and Siva from a small village want to solve the problems around them while also winning an award.
The ideas they come up with based on their limited knowledge of science and how they are resilient, almost being stubborn in their attempts to create artificial snow is fun to read but also proves how creative kids can get when encouraged in the right way. I loved how the author added details of all three Chandrayaan missions with each of them explained between each experiment of Valarmathi and Siva, hence drawing a parallel on how science experiments are similar though their scale can be different.
The author also explains why such missions are important for a developing country like India as there is a constant argument on goals achieved versus budget spent. The idea that the kids start with and how they finally achieve it is also impressive. The illustrations are spellbinding especially the ones around the missions helping kids relate to it better.
A fictional story with a thoughtful message, highly recommended as I am sure kids would like to start their own science experiments after reading this book.
My rating:
4/5.