Floating Home - Softcover

David Getz is the author of Frozen Man, Life On Mars, and Frozen Girl. He is an elementary-school science teacher and staff trainer in New York City.

Michael Rex is the author and illustrator of The Painting Gorilla, My Fire Engine, and My Race Car. Mr. Rex lives in Brooklyn, New York.

In a unique slant on a typical homework assignment, Getz (Frozen Man, 1994, etc.) and newcomer Rex send a girl to incredible heights for her art project--outer space. When Maxine is instructed to look at her home in a new way, she leaves school and keeps on walking. Inside the Kennedy Space Center, she suits up; her outfit includes a diaper, two kinds of underwear (one to keep her warm, the other to cool her down), and a large orange pressure suit, all of which are wittily captured in Rex's acrylic illustrations. Feeling like a 100-pound duck in a diaper, Maxine takes a fantastic journey into space, where fun facts about weightlessness and rockets are interwoven into her personal account of take-off (the noise is like ``a thousand thousand lions roaring! Like the heart of an immense raging fire. Roar!''), flying upside down at dizzying speeds, witnessing hurricanes, shooting stars, and the earth from space, where ``somebody had forgotten to draw the lines.'' What begins as a contrivance catapults readers into an animated, aeronautical adventure and an entertaining look at the science of space travel; it ends as a visionary paradigm for a peaceful planet. (Picture book. 5-9) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.