THE ROOFTOP ROCKET PARTY

Finn’s summer visit to “famous rocket scientist” Doctor Gass is a serious and glorious adventure. Illustrated energetically with cheerful watercolors and bold outlines, every page offers a new use of space. At first, his host disappoints Finn: Doctor Gass’s own rockets, kept in “a very secret and unusual place,” turn out to exist only in his head, and he answers Finn’s questions about outer space with disappointingly grounded information. The moon is made of rock, he explains, not cheese, and furthermore, “There is no supper on the moon.” One midnight, however, a Night Thing comes to Finn’s window and invites him to the Man in the Moon’s birthday party. Transportation is by way of the red rocket on the roof (which Doctor Gass, in daylight, had explained away as a water tank), and Finn easily reaches the moon. The Man in the Moon, whose elegant resemblance to Doctor Gass goes unmentioned, hosts the bounciest, most joyful party Finn could have hoped for, complete with a hunt through shimmery moon caves, a picnic that tastes “like nothing on earth,” and a tune on a “pale violin.” Terrific use of watercolor renders environments beautifully multicolored, while black outlines maintain clarity and emotion. Lest readers fear that Finn’s trip was a dream, Doctor Gass discovers incontrovertible evidence the next morning. Crisp writing, top-notch composition, and exuberant illustrations from blueprint endpaper to blueprint endpaper. (Picture book. 3-6)