|
Maurice on the Moon is a science fiction adventure about a young boy growing up in a frontier mining town. Maurice Haberman’s father works for the mining company that owns the town, his mother is a ecologist, both of them work hard to earn a living in the little town of Gassendi LEX that has been carved out of a crater rim on the edge of an ancient lunar sea of frozen lava. Maurice’s parents have come to the frontier to escape the crowded, desperate conditions of Earth. They have worked for years for a chance to earn their citizenship in their adopted country; a dream that seems to be within reach at last.
Maurice doesn’t share his parents enthusiasm for his adopted homeland. In fact, he hates the Moon and dreams of nothing but leaving Gassendi LEX forever. Living in a lunar colony isn’t easy, the work is hard and everyone has to do his part to help the family survive. Besides doing well in class, Maurice has many chores at home, and he is expected to help his father with prospecting work for the mining company when he isn’t in school. To make everything worse, the Earth hangs like a jewel in the black lunar sky, spinning in place just out of reach with the promise of everything Maurice wants, but can never have.
The Earth is everything the Moon is not – a colorful world where the air is free and water falls from the sky. A world where plants grow wild and no one charges you to breathe the oxygen they produce. A world where the sun’s light isn’t full of deadly radiation and no one needs to put on a pressure suit and helmet just to go outside. Maurice will do almost anything to get to the Earth, even stealing a ride on a space liner doesn’t seem out of the question. But leaving home isn’t as easy as it seems, and paradise doesn’t always keep its promises!
Teaching Science Through Literature:
Maurice on the Moon is currently an adopted science text for students from 5th to 8th grade in several districts across Southern California. The book meets California State Science standards for Earth and Space Science, Physical Science, and Biological Science / Ecology. A complete curriculum guide containing chapter by chapter science standards, questions, activities, and investigations that integrate science with literature, mathematics, writing, art, and other multi-disciplinary subjects is available at www.MauriceOnTheMoon.com Teachers who are interested in using Maurice as a classroom text are encouraged to contact the author for suggestions and assistance in implementing this exciting book into their own classrooms. The curriculum is easily scalable for students at every level from the most basic to the most advanced. The discovery oriented activities closely follow the adventures of Maurice and his friends in the book. Let Maurice on the Moon help you put the sense of adventure back into your classroom!
Annotated Contents:
1. Stowaway
We meet Maurice Haberman and his friend Cassie Metis horsing around at the local spaceport. Maurice puts a crazy plan to get to Earth into action. Cassie saves him from stowing away on a space liner and getting into big trouble.
2. Life on the Frontier
Life on a lunar colony is vastly different from Earth. Every portion of the environment must be brought in or created from scratch, including air, water, and a food chain. Some of Maurice’s daily chores involve helping with recycling and environmental maintenance, the trouble is, Maurice sometimes neglects his responsibilities!
3. A New Plan
Maurice hatches a new plan to get to Earth – go prospecting and strike it rich! Maurice talks Cassie into helping him take a broken down old rover from his father’s mining company without permission.
4. Up and Over
Maurice and Cassie head for the Sea of Moisture in their stolen buggy, but first they must get the dilapidated vehicle over the formidable rim of the Gassendi Crater. Driving uphill turns out to be easier than driving down, when the buggy starts a small avalanche in the soft soil of the crater rim.
5. Helium Prospectors
Maurice and Cassie venture out onto the Sea of Moisture, prospecting for helium-3, a valuable isotope used for fusion power. Prospecting is more work than they had expected and success is not quick to find them. Trouble comes when Cassie pushes Maurice and he trips, ripping his suit.
6. Small Crater – Big Trouble
Cassie is driving Maurice back to Gassendi LEX, unfortunately, the battery on the old buggy is low and may not make it all the way back. Cassie is furious at Maurice; arguing loudly, they drift off track and crash into a crater, ruining the buggy and sealing Maurice’s fate.
7. Reckoning
Maurice and Cassie are returned safely to Gassendi, but they must face the consequences of their actions. The only bright spot in this mess is that Maurice may have found a real deposit of helium-3 which could save his father’s job, ironically keeping his family on the Moon.
8. Jump Like an Earthman
Maurice joins the track team to help him forget about going to Earth. Cassie finds out that she and her parents will be returning to Earth soon. Cassie must wear a heavy ‘Earth Suit’, so that she can get used to Earth-normal weight again. Maurice borrows the E-suit for yet another crazy scheme.
9. Arrivals and Departures
Maurice is doing well on the track team; the coach suggests he may be able to earn a place at the All System Track Finals in Chicago – a possible ticket to Earth! Mike Evans, an older boy on the track team is angered when the coach insists that he adopt Maurice’s unorthodox training method.
10. The Leap to Earth
Maurice and his rival get into a fight over the theft of the E-suit. The coach helps the boys reconcile their differences and learn to respect one another. Maurice competes in the big track meet and manages second place, good enough for a ticket to Earth!
11. Flight to Earth
Maurice finally gets to fly to Earth on a space liner. The observation deck shows impressive views of the lunar landscape, where Maurice watches Earthrise for the first time! Maurice experiences higher ‘acceleration gravity’ as the ship heads away from the Moon and zero gravity in free flight on his way to Earth.
12. High Gravity Planet
Maurice lands on Earth, where everything weighs too much and falls too fast! Air pollution, humidity, and the lack of air purification are a real surprise. Open land and ‘wild trees’ are mysteries without answers, and no one seems to bury their houses properly to protect them against radiation and meteorites, either. Trying the high jump in high gravity is a shock, but not as much as playing a game of pickup basketball with several Earth kids.
13. Lost in the Wilderness
The mysteries of Earth get deeper as Maurice visits an aquarium in Chicago. A camping trip on a local lake shore with boating and swimming in water where wild fish live and mosquitoes feed is utterly alien. A violent storm with lightning and hail lets Maurice experience real weather after a lifetime of watching clouds from the Moon.
14. The Big Meet
Maurice travels to Chicago to compete in the All System Track and Field Finals. Crowded Earth with traffic jams, air pollution, and its millions of people and their strange culture is beginning to wear on Maurice. Another boy from the Moon befriends Maurice, making him very homesick.
15. Citizen of the Moon
Maurice returns to Gassendi LEX to a hero’s welcome. Returning to low gravity, clean air, and comfy underground housing feels wonderful! On Citizenship Day, Maurice and his parents go to Eagle Stadium on the Sea of Tranquility where they take the oath of citizenship to the Lunar Union and become permanent citizens of the Moon.
Other books in the Science through literature series include:
Maurice and the Doomed Colony of Mars (Fall 2006). Maurice’s mother is shanghaied to Mars to help save a dying colony on the verge of ecological collapse. On the way out to Mars, Maurice gets stuck aboard ship with Shannon Kappel, daughter of a scientist recruited from the Earth country of Ireland to help save the Mars colony. Sparks fly as the girl from Ireland meets our boy from the Moon. Once they arrive on Mars, everyone believes that there must be a simple scientific answer to the colony’s troubles, but Maurice sees spies around every corner and saboteurs behind each new disaster. Maurice drags Shannon into the chase as they explore the red planet together. No one else seems to believe in the existence of the saboteur, but Maurice could be right – dead right!
Maurice on the Far Side (Spring 2007).
Maurice is back from Mars and off for a well deserved vacation with his friend Jim at summer camp – on the lunar far side! The culture of the far side is vastly different from the Lunar Union, and Maurice has trouble fitting in. The troubles only increase when Shannon Kappel shows up at camp too! Jim is convinced that Shannon is there because Maurice’s parents are trying to set him up with a good match – and arranged marriages aren’t uncommon on the lunar frontier! Danger threatens and the trio is drawn into a web of intrigue and adventure as an interplanetary mining company tries to take over the fiercely independent lunar colony of Zalinski – and their local industry, making the fastest computers in the solar system. But the NovaLunik computer company has a secret much more sinister than a super fast computer chip – and they won’t hesitate to kill to protect it!
|
