The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet / Eleanor Cameron

3.5 stars out of 5

In print since the 1950's, the Mushroom Planet series is back with a new design by illustrator Kevin Hawkes. Don't miss the adventures of Chuck and David, two boys who travel to the alien planet Basidium in their homemade spaceship. This timeless series is a classic that is sure to be read over and over again.

***Wanda’s Summer Carnival of Children’s Literature***
I’m pretty sure that I was in Grade 6 when I first read this book. I was also busy reading Children’s Digest during those years and I’m pretty sure that’s where I had been reading about mushrooms & fungi before encountering this little adventure. I remember being completely enamoured of the Mushroom Planet and going on to make many spore prints from mushrooms found in a little grove of trees in my uncle’s pasture. (My mother was a very patient woman, now that I look back on it. She put up with so many of my little biological projects. Flowers being pressed in the encyclopedia, mushrooms releasing their spores under jars, snails doing their thing in goldfish bowls).

I actually had to request this book through interlibrary loan in order to revisit it. It was worth the effort. Probably not too exciting to today’s children (it was, after all, written before the moon landing, which I remember watching on TV during Grade 2) who are used to Mars rovers and space craft visiting Pluto and Jupiter. But it also had the magical elements of a gentle fantasy that endeared it to me yet again.

Good memories.