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“A sneeze is a breeze in your nose.”

This is my everty for the Tomie de Paola award entry.

Gesundheit!

It was the summer of 2007 and I had a book to write. The time had come--no more stalling: "let's wait a little longer and see what happens up on Mars." That had been my excuse for two years. The Mars Exploration Rovers had landed in January 2004, their mission planned to last ninety days. Then I was to write the book. But the rovers didn't break down or even stop, and the mission went on, and on, and on, and on (and it's still going as I write this in 2010).

In 2007, I had plenty to write about. Tens of thousands of images and an immense amount of scientific data had been sent to Earth, and scientists were forming a detailed geologic picture of the planet. All along I had followed the mission, checking in on the progress of the rovers via NASA's websites, press releases, and publications; reading scientific and technical articles; and devouring the latest books by Jim Bell and Steve Squyres (the main guys behind the mission), calling them at their offices at Cornell University.

But enough--surfing, reading, talking, thinking--it was time to write! Trouble was, I had just experienced a major life change that was only going to get more challenging. In June 2007, my family and I moved to New York State after two years in Anchorage, Alaska. My father was terminally ill and needed care. The moment I stepped off the one-way Alaska Airlines flight into Newark, I became his primary caregiver. (Did I mention that I had four children--ages 8 to 18 at the time--who were not thrilled about the move?) Before confronting the overwhelming task of registering children in new schools, organizing medical care, and learning everything there is to know about catheter bags, my family and I went to the beach for a one week vacation. I brought along my Moleskin© with the idea of beginning my book. This is what I wrote:

I am on an island, on a beach, fishing. The sun has set, but the sky is still pink on the edge. A bell rings constantly from the point of the land that curves into the sea. People line the shore, some wade into the channel, casting into the darkness. Behind me the Moon is up, a crescent in the sky, and nearby a bright dot shines steadily--Venus, I think. Mars is somewhere out there, too. I am trying to imagine myself there, on a distant land, where there is no ocean and where the daytime sky is always pink. If I were there, I'd be bundled in a spacesuit with no chance of actually touching the land with my fingers, or feeling its bitter dry wind in my face. So, how do I write about this distant place--my only reference the postcard photographs taken by little cars that carry cameras and rove its surface? How do I write about a place where I have never been, where no one has ever been?

S0 the next day, while sitting on the beach, these words popped into my head: cars on mars. That was it, of course! That was the title--it was so obvious, yet it had taken more than two years to materialize in my mind. Suddenly, I had something familiar to work with. . .the rovers were like cars on a road trip. And I'd had a lot of experience with road trips--Colorado to New York, New York to California, California to New York, all of Ireland, and the biggie--New York to Alaska on the Alaska Highway, through British Columbia and the Yukon.

As one always does before a road trip, I made lists: