It was only one small step for Neil Armstrong, but man's first landing on the moon has turned into an award-winning book by Brian Floca '91.
Floca won the Sibert Honor Award from the Association for Library Service to Children, a division of the American Library Association, for "Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11," a play-by-play account of the first lunar landing that Floca wrote and illustrated.
Floca said there were three main inspirations for his book: "Man on the Moon," written by Andrew Chaikin '78; the movie "For All Mankind," which contains unedited footage of the Apollo 11 mission; and his "residual childhood interest for space and astronauts."
Floca, whose book "Lightship" was a 2008 Sibert Honor Book, said he spent many years working on a draft for the book before finalizing the concept. "It took a few bad versions until I came up with the final product," he said.
When Floca finally did settle on an idea, he sold his proposal to an editor and then worked for eight straight months to produce the book.
Floca said the environment at Brown helped drive him to create this book.
"Something in the air at Brown compelled me," he said. "It's a place where faculty and friends always encourage you to do your best."
As a Brown student, Floca was a cartoonist for The Herald, where he learned "to make good (visual) combinations," he said.
