Astronomy: Out of This World! (Basher Science)

Gr 4-8. Employing the same illustrative style used in Adrian Dingle's "The Periodic Table: Elements with Style!" (Kingfisher, 2007), Basher has created a portrait gallery of personified planets, comets, space probes, galaxies, several kinds of stars, and an array of other celestial bodies in a hyper-cute, pastel cartoon style reminiscent of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami's more extravagant flights. Along with short bulleted lists of additional information, each figure offers a fact-based self-description, from the Sun's exuberant "I'm a total star, the center of everything, baby! A fearsome fireball burning 600 million tons of hydrogen every second" to snotty Space-time's "Because you're used to seeing in only three dimensions, you cannot even imagine what I look like." Though the closest star to the sun is misidentified as a "brown dwarf" (it is actually Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf, which is correctly categorized on a later page), Green's astro-narrative is both accurate and spiced with seldom-mentioned details, such as Pluto's three moons and Saturn's weirdly hexagonal polar cloud. This won't replace more conventionally written and illustrated surveys, but it could kindle (or in undermotivated older readers, rekindle) interest in the topic. And it's fun!"John Peters, New York Public Library" Copyright 2009 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

"Basher has created a portrait gallery of personified ... celestial bodies in a hyper-cute, pastel cartoon style reminiscent of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami's more extravagant flights. . . . Green's astro-narrative is both accurate and spiced with seldom-mentioned details, ... it could kindle (or in under motivated older readers, rekindle) interest in the topic. And it's fun!" —School Library Journal