Boy, Were We Wrong about the Solar System!

Some people used to think that Earth was smack-dab in the middle of the universe, with all the stars and planets held in the sky by giant glass balls. Boy, were they wrong! In this follow-up to the award-winning Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs!, Kathleen Kudlinski and John Rocco look at the mistakes, mishaps, and creativity that are part of scientific discovery. From the first humans wondering about the night sky to the demotion of Pluto to dwarf planet status, this book is an entertaining and informative look at how scientific theories change over time.

Some people used to think that Earth was smack-dab in the middle of the universe, with all the stars and planets held in the sky by giant glass balls. Boy, were they wrong! In this follow-up to the award-winning Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs!, Kathleen Kudlinski and John Rocco look at the mistakes, mishaps, and creativity that are part of scientific discovery. From the first humans wondering about the night sky to the demotion of Pluto to dwarf planet status, this book is an entertaining and informative look at how scientific theories change over time.

School Library Journal

Gr 2-3

Rocco's gentle caricatures and visual gags further brighten this wry follow-up to the author's Boy, Were We Wrong About Dinosaurs! (Dutton, 2005). Showing how widely held preconceptions about nature are slowly, stumblingly tested by scientific study, Kudlinski traces our view of the universe from flat earth to the reclassification of Pluto as a dwarf planet.Effectively giving readers the big picture first, she places most of the significant specific terms and names in a time line at the end, and in the main narrative focuses on concepts: "A new idea came to an astronomer. He said that the sun was in the center of the [solar] system, not the Earth. That would mean that we were not so important. He had no proof, so most people just laughed...." Though itself a little "wrong" as Pluto and its more distant mates have very recently been RE-reclassified as "Plutoids," this breezy account will be as equally effective in demonstrating how science works as it will be in bringing young readers up to speed on the structure of this and other solar systems.-John Peters, New York Public Library

Kathleen V. Kudlinski is the author of more than two dozen books for children. She lives in Connecticut.

John Rocco is the author-illustrator of Wolf! Wolf!, a 2007 Book Sense Pick. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.