Space

School Library Journal

Gr 5-7-Gardner offers 22 demonstrations and experiments, with suggestions for several more, on the laws of motion, gravitational effects, planetary movement, and related subjects. He prefaces each topical section with a short historical introduction and an explanation of the principles involved, and supplements each activity with open-ended questions designed to encourage further investigation. Unfortunately, there are a few errors in the captions for the diagrams and photographs; several of the photos are only tangentially relevant to the subject matter; back matter includes a pointless alphabetical list of materials, as well as a table of English and metric measures that has abbreviations but no equivalents. Worse yet, the projects are not always well designed-a homemade pendulum requires a box that is not included in the list of materials; the author suggests that a spring balance be borrowed from school; and directions for a multistage balloon rocket are woefully incomplete. In all, this is a substandard effort. Stick with books such as David McKay's Space Science Projects for Young Scientists (Watts, 1986) or Ben Millspaugh's Aviation and Space Science Projects (TAB, 1991).-John Peters, New York Public Library