Mission to Deep Space : Voyager's Interplanetary Odyssey

Children's Literature - Marilyn Courtot

A journalist assigned to cover the VOYAGER missions to the Outer Planets joyfully writes about his experiences in this richly illustrated book for young space enthusiasts. In satisfying detail, Burrows outlines the VOYAGER missions, the spacecraft, the technology, and the scientific advancements achieved. While chronicling the voyage of the sister spaceships, the author also reminds his readers that joy for scientists lies as much in learning new questions to ask as it does in finding answers.

School Library Journal

Gr 4-6-This report on the two Voyager probes and their observations of the giant planets features eye-catching, full-color illustrations, playful typography, and arresting titles (Chapter 4: ``Sizing Up the Lord of the Rings'')-but the pictures are more decorative than revealing, and the text is marred by inconsistencies. Burrows is an experienced journalist with a fluid style, clear in describing each of the spacecrafts' scientific instruments, and contagiously enthusiastic about the mission's importance, but capable of being both overly brief (``Hyperion is Saturn's strangely shaped, weird moon.'' Period.) and contradictory. Voyager II either did or did not detect a magnetic field on Uranus, depending on the page, and a photo of Titan's limb apparently (only apparently, because it's artificially colored, but many readers won't realize that) belies the later assertion that Triton is the only blue moon in the solar system. Two pages of type are printed on a pink star field that makes them almost illegible; the other illustrations are either paintings by four distinctly different artists, or composite, false-color NASA photos-unlabeled as such- that in at least two cases form unintelligible montages. Stick with Maury Solomon's Album of Voyager (Watts, 1990) or Necia Apfel's Voyager to the Planets (Clarion, 1991).-John Peters, New York Public Library

Carolyn Phelan

One among many books presenting the "Voyager" missions to explore the solar system, this highlights aspects of the space flights such as how the "Voyager" craft were powered, what messages from Earth they carried, and what was known about a planet before and after they flew past. The writing excels at conveying the excitement felt by those involved in the missions as the encounters took place. Usually divided into self-contained, double-page spreads, the book includes a wide variety of styles in illustration, from intelligently designed diagrams to paintings and drawings to unsatisfying photo-composites to photographs of space, which sometimes underlie the text and occasionally make it difficult to read. Intriguing supplementary material for larger collections.