Before launching in to a review I need to disclose something. Astronomy is one of those topics that has a particularly magical hold over me. The adventure, the scale, the beauty of space – I love it, I’m amazed by it and can’t understand why everyone isn’t enthralled by it. Especially when such crazy, incredible, awe-inspiring events such as the landing of the Soyuz capsule bringing back astronauts from the International Space Station…

Can you believe people travlled through space in this? Credit: NASA TV

…the emergence of astronauts in training for a mission to mars after 520 days confined in a simulated space ship,

Russian "cosmonaut" emerging from practice journety to Mars. Credit: Oleg Voloshin/AFP/Getty Images

…and the launch of the Curiosity rover to actually land on Mars have all happened in the last few weeks.

The Mars Curiosity rover takes off from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas V rocket. Credit: Rex Features

So there you have it. I’m not impartial when it comes to reviewing books on astronomy and space. But if you and your kids haven’t yet been bitten by the space bug, will The Story of Astronomy and Space, which has been shortlisted for the 2011 Royal Society’s Young People’s Book Prize be the spark that lights the fire?

Over 8 chapters The Story of Astronomy and Space covers topics as diverse as how the universe began, the physical facts about planets in our solar system, how astronomy as a science has developed, the space race, and the characteristics of different types of telescopes. The book also includes star charts (for both Northern and Southern hemispheres) and a glossary.

I thought it was great that the book covered such a wide variety of aspects of astronomy and space, and did so in an thoroughly engaging manner. There are lots of jokes (often visual) and each page has a couple of “Did you know?” style facts in the margins that are always amazing and intriguing (eg that Saturn would float if there were an ocean big enough to hold it, or why during the Second World War the British hired an astrologer to study the horoscopes of Adolf Hitler).

Louie Stowell highlights both the fact that there is still so much to learn about space and also that there is a venerable tradition of amateurs making significant contributions to this field; I think young readers will find this particularly inspiring, as there’s a palpable sense they could really make a difference to space science if they wanted to.

Richly illustrated with photos, computer generated images and cartoon style illustration each page in this book is packed with plenty to pour over. That said, of all the books shortlisted for the 2011 Royal Society’s Young People’s Book Prize this one has the most (primary) school textbook-y feel to it: Solid, reliable, and without “gimmicks” (perhaps precisely what you’d expect and hope for from an Usborne book, as this is); it might be hard for this book to catch the eyes of young readers when placed next to award contenders The Icky Sticky Snot Book or How the World Works.

Inspired by this solar walk in Cleveland, Ohio, and of course The Story of Astronomy and Space, I set about creating our own version of the solar system in our back garden so the girls and I could walk amongst the planets and travel back in time.

Based on distances given in Usborne book for distances from the sun I worked out a scale based on 100 units so that anyone should be able to use it easily to adapt to whatever distance they have available to them (the side of the kitchen table, their walk to school etc).

Notes: From this table you can see that 46 million km = x. If you wanted to create a 1 metre long solar walkway then you’d find the Earth 3.26cm along the walk, whereas Uranus would be 65.22cm along the walk. Our Garden path is 1350 cm long, so if 1350 cm = 100x, 1x = 13.5cm, and on this basis I calculated how to fit the solar system into our garden.

M running through space!

Having got a basic grasp of distances between planets we compared sizes of planets. Using this calculator from the Exploratium I worked out a to-scale model of the diameter of the planets to fit on our patio. The scale of this model was NOT the same scale as our walk way (we don’t have enough space for that).

I created stencils the right scaled size (all bar the sun fit on sheets of A4) and the girls then used chalk to stencil them inside the large sun I had already drawn.

Mars and Mercury are barely visible in the photo but there are small circles representing each on the patio!

J planet hopping

These scaled versions of the solar system have proved lots of fun. Plans are now afoot to create a cardboard box rocket to fly between the planets!

Space and solar system songs we’ve enjoyed listening to recently include:

Other projects which would go well alongside reading The Story of Astronomy and Space include:

Do you have any children’s astronomy books at home? What books (fiction or non fiction) would you recommend about space?

This book is one of six books shortlisted for the Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize 2011, an award that celebrates the best recent books that communicate science to young people. The winner will be announced on December 1st.

Disclosure: I received my copy of this book from the publisher. This review, however, reflect my own and honest opinion.

This week’s host for Nonfiction Monday is Camille at A Curious This. Do click on through to see what other books are included in this week’s celebration of children’s nonfiction books.

Through a series of visual and written cameos depicting key moments in Darwin’s life, Manning and Granström have created a picture book biography of one of the most influential figures in human history.

Starting with his childhood, through his failed studies at Edinburgh and Cambridge universities and onto, for the bulk of the book, his 5 year journey around the world on HMS Beagle, readers dip in and out of (what is presented as) Darwin’s thoughts; each double page spread features a short passage as if taken from Darwin’s personal diaries.

These “diary extracts” are supported by several boxes on each page further fleshing out the given moment in Darwin’s life. These are presented as facts about Darwin and his journey, rather than personal reflections.

Following the return of the Beagle to the UK, What Mr Darwin Saw follows Darwin’s route to publishing The Origin of Species, acknowledging the controversy it stirred up amongst the religious faithful, and also the important role played Alfred Russel Wallace, a contemporary naturalist who independently proposed a theory of evolution due to natural selection.

This great picture book tells a story you’re never to young to know about. On the down side I initially found this quite a difficult book to read aloud to my children. Although the book does tell a linear biography of Darwin, each double page spread stands alone and so readers have to make a lot of connections of their own when following the story from cover to cover. For example, on one page Darwin is studying in Edinburgh, whilst next he is in Cambridge and although one can infer what has taken place, it’s not immediately clear.

The decision to adopt a diary style for the main bodies of text makes the narrative immediately personal, but for adults and children very used to 21st century text, the 19th century echoes in vocabulary choices and syntax can make it a slightly stumbling read, at least the first time. This is definitely a case of where re-reading turns a good book into a great book.

On the plus side, everyone in our family learned a lot from What Mr Darwin Saw. It was fascinating to discover more about the journey of the Beagle than just the visit to the Galapagos islands; readers see Darwin in the Andes and Australia, making observations that impact upon his thinking about evolution.

This books is also brilliant as a springboard. It could be used to do so much with – from literacy projects based on diary writing, geography projects following the journey of the Beagle, through to science activities such as comparing fossil remains with their modern day ancestors.

The illustrations are enjoyable and certainly open out Darwin’s story to a wider audience. Do not be fooled, however, by the pictures – this book is a great example of a picture book ideal for older children, say 10-12, although M at 6 has thoroughly enjoyed it, and J at 3 will happily sit and listen whilst her older sister, inspired by Darwin’s story, asks all sorts of questions I don’t know the answer to!

Having lapped up What Mr Darwin Saw we felt the best way to celebrate Darwin’s contribution to science was to create our own evolutionary tree of life.

The Open University Tree of Life poster

Once we had the basic relationships for animals sorted, we set about creating a 3D tree of life. We gathered a selection of wind-lopped branches from our garden and the nearby park. We chose the largest branch to be the trunk of our tree, and into the trunk of our tree we drilled 15 holes approximately equal distances down the trunk.

After our shed experience inspired by Findus, M was keen to try out the electric drill. Because of the size of our “trunk” we had to do the drilling in the kitchen. Because of the size of our “branches” we used a flat drill bit rather than a regular drill bit.

As you can see J didn’t like the sound of the drill, but M adored it! The raw power in her hands!

Once drilled we put our trunk in a pot of sand and hotglued our “branches” into the drilled holes. Our bare tree was ready!

Next up I printed out images of all the living things we were to include in our tree, this time extending what we had learned already with animals to include fungi, plants and bacteria. The girls coloured in the images and we stuck them to card. The images we used were of a chimpanzee, a lemur, a rabbit, a lion, an elephant, a kangaroo, a duck, a frog, a fish, a starfish, a tarantula, a jellyfish, a mushroom, a sunflower and a type of bacteria.

Then we hung our various life forms from our tree of life in the correct order ie with the life form most distantly related to us on the lowest branch, up to the life form most closely related to us hanging on the branch next to the top of the tree. At the very top of the tree we hung a picture of a person which M had drawn.

Finally, we brought everything together with streamers of DNA – paper party streamers, thrown in pairs to create a approximation to strings of double helixes. As the streamers were thrown the twisting paper looked quite a lot like DNA but by the time the streamers were on the tree, their helix features were for the most part lost! Still, a bit of discussion about DNA went down well with turning our tree of life into a decorated Christmas tree for non-Creationists.

Whilst working out how we are related to lions, ducks and mushrooms we listened to:

We also enjoyed listening to Richard Milner, the singing Darwinian scholar (!) – you can watch a nice video about him on the New York Times website here.


Other activities which might work well alongside reading What Mr Darwin Saw include:

There are loads of online resources for learning about evolution. Here are some I enjoyed whilst teaching myself about the things I’ve forgotten since school, inspired by What Mr Darwin Saw:

Over the next few posts I’ll be reviewing as many as possible of the six books shortlisted for the Royal Society Young People’s Book Prize 2011, an award that celebrates the best recent books that communicate science to young people. The winner will be announced on December 1st.




Disclosure: I received my copy of this book from the publisher. This review, however, reflect my own and honest opinion.

This week’s host for Nonfiction Monday is Anamaria at books together. Do click on through to see what other books are included in this week’s celebration of children’s nonfiction books.