The Wonderful Flight To The Mushroom Planet

Sci-fi is a genre with very few :classics:, particularly for children, but The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron would definitely be one of them. Cameron is the namesake for the middle-grade reader category of the Golden Duck award, and The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet was her first children's book. Published in 1954, the story was written for Cameron's son, David, who wanted her to write a space story featuring himself. In the book, David and his friend Chuck race to build a spaceship after finding an ad in the newspaper looking for one. When the spaceship is completed out of spare parts that the boys find, they bring it to Mr. Bass, a scientist who helps them improve the ship. He tells them that with their parents permission, he will use the rocket to send them to the nearby planet of Basidium-X to help the residents that are in peril. He also tells him that their trip will fail without a mascot. The boys grab a hen and prepare for blast off. The first a series of adventures that feature David and the Mushroom Planet, The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet is a quiet book about space travel that lives on in the memories of many sci-fi fans. Like Heinlein's young adult books, it is the spirit of inventiveness and optimism that make these books stand out as classics.