Liam Little: The Moon

Liam Little had flown through every kind of sky there was. He had watched two brothers lift a wood-and-muslin machine off a cold beach in North Carolina. He had flown through dogfights over France, alongside dive bombers over the Pacific, past shark-mouthed fighters over the jungle, and chased an orange rocket plane that outran the sound of its own engine over the Mojave, sometimes with a sister riding behind him, sometimes completely on his own. Nothing like this, though. Tonight, Liam watches a rocket lift off on television with his father and learns that someone did this before, a long time ago, farther than anyone had ever gone. By morning he has built a second airplane out of a new neighbor's boxes: Boxrocket-1. His sisters build something of their own, a cardboard Mission Control station, complete with a duct-taped radar dish and stay behind to guide him. There's no room in this cockpit for anyone else. Two hundred and forty thousand miles. One boy. One cardboard rocket. The farthest flight in the history of five-year-olds. Liam Little is going to the Moon.