I Love You Michael Collins by Lauren Baratz-Logsted - OPTIONAL

I Love You Michael Collins by Lauren Baratz-Logsted, 225 pages.  Farrar Straus Giroux (Macmillan), 2017.  $17.  

Content: Language: G; Mature Content: G; Violence: G.  

BUYING ADVISORY: EL – OPTIONAL  

AUDIENCE APPEAL: AVERAGE        

Ten year old Mamie and her best friend Buster are excited for the astronaut mission Apollo 11.  When the astronauts are talked about at school everyone praises Neil Armstrong and Buzz Alder, but nobody knows about Michael Collins because his job is to stay in the spaceship and his mission doesn’t seem as glorified.  Mamie takes it upon herself to be Michael Collin’s pen pal and not only encourages him on his mission but expresses the many happenings in her house as her parents fight and her sisters are growing up.  

I wanted to like this book, but I feel like the letter format was completely unbelievable, especially the last letter.  Mamie’s story line is also hard to believe as her parents get in a fight and Mamie finds herself home alone for a few days and as a ten-year-old she isn’t scared but makes herself a cake and a nice dinner.  It was a bit hard to believe.  The parts I liked where the information about the Apollo 11 mission and imagining what it must have been like to watch it on television, even if the facts about the mission seemed forced into the story.  

C. Peterson