Moonboy’s magic landing

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When Anna Ciddor was 12 years old, she witnessed something that would stay with her for the rest of her life – the moon landing.

“The whole idea that people could sit in a little rocket to fly for a few days through space and get to that light in the sky and land on it, walk around on it was just unbelievable. It was miraculous,” Ciddor told The AJN when discussing her latest book, Moonboy.

“In the 1960s, it was a different world. We didn’t have computers, we didn’t have mobile phones, we didn’t have microwaves. It was just an ancient world and I don’t think modern kids have any concept of that.”

Ciddor recalled hiding under the covers in the bedroom she shared with her younger sisters and while they slept, she listened through a crackly transistor radio, trying to decipher the conversations between the astronauts and Houston.

Ciddor pointed out that many modern kids take things for granted, including all the scientific developments. But, as she said, when she was a child and “we still got mumps and measles”; when something new came along, it was a miracle.

“People are pulling all different things, important things, out of the story, which is wonderful…” – Anna Ciddor

And according to Ciddor, the miraculous moon landing was the initial inspiration behind Moonboy, which she said was a lot of fun to write.

Moonboy follows Letty, who slips back in time to 1969 and gets to know a young boy called Keith, who just happens to be her grandfather. In modern times, her grandfather has dementia, and Letty’s ability to slip back and forth in time ends up being the key to her being able to communicate with him.

“I decided with the time slip theme it was initially just for fun – Letty would meet her grandfather, she’d go back in time and learn about his interest in the moon landing. That will give her a way into his mind and into his heart,” she explained. But then Ciddor saw a number of other themes emerging. Moonboy touches on dementia – and how to relate to people with dementia – emotional connections, family relationships, friendship issues and finding oneself.

“People are pulling all different things, important things, out of the story, which is wonderful,” Ciddor said. “One of the things I’m hoping now is that when people read the book, they will have some of these tools to talk to someone with dementia,” she said. “It was those sorts of things that helped me take the book to another dimension. It’s not just an exciting adventure story, there’s more to it.”

While in the past, Ciddor has collaborated with her sisters – particularly with her two other time slip books The Boy Who Stepped Through Time and A Message Through Time – for Moonboy, Ciddor decided to pick her husband’s brain.

The milk bar as described in Moonboy.
Photo: supplied

“I had used my own home background for 52 Mondays so I needed a different setting,” Ciddor explained to The AJN, recalling another of her previous books. So, she turned to her husband who grew up behind a milk bar. “The Ciddor brothers had such fun reminiscing about their childhood in the ’60s. I’m delighted to be weaving their memories into the story.”

Ciddor said the brothers drew plans of what the milk bar used to look like, but funnily enough, their plans didn’t even match each other’s, which she said was a laugh and a lot of fun.

“We dug out the old photos of the milk bar and it just brought such light to the brothers’ eyes. They were chatting about it, talking on the phone to me about it, I’d ring them up and we’d chat for hours,” she recalled.

Ciddor explains in a section of Moonboy titled ‘The Truth Behind Moonboy’ that everything about the living quarters in the book are based on the memories of the Ciddor brothers, including the bottles noisily being delivered in the mornings, being able to buy lollies for just a few cents and even purchasing bread from a bakery to resell it at the milk bar. She even discovered that the building is still standing to this day.

“It still has a shop out the front,” she writes, “though, it’s not a milk bar anymore … I even found photos of the current interior on a real estate website, which helped me to picture the open-plan living quarters for the modern parts of the story.”

Ciddor also explained that all the quotes from the news around the moon landing were based on real-life articles from The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Herald from 1969. She even found an amateur 1969 audio recording made in Australia of radio and TV broadcasts of the Apollo 11 mission, which she was able to listen to and transcribe, using the actual words of broadcasters, interviewees, the astronauts and even NASA.

Ciddor said what’s perhaps one of the nicest things about a book like Moonboy, is that different generations can connect over the theme. Children who read it can ask their grandparents all about the moon landing and their memories of the historic event.

“As a historical writer, that’s a dream come true when they can relate to the past.”

Moonboy is published by Allen & Unwin, $17.99 rrp.