The Sun

School Library Journal

Gr 2-4-- The art of science photography is nowhere used to better effect than in these books designed by George, and young browsers will get an eyeful from them. The dramatic, knife-sharp images are reproduced in glowing colors, some filling an entire page, others gathered in uncrowded groups of three or four. The pictures suggest many relationships and connections: fiery terrestrial lava flows in Moon are used to describe lunar flows billions of years ago; Sun includes not just photos of sunspots, prominences, and the like, but storm clouds, the northern lights, and frosted leaves as well. A smoky factory is placed next to a close view of California poppies in Planet Earth . The text is printed on half-pages, a device that allows uninterrupted viewing of the spectacular photos. There are some flaws. There's no visible transition between the two shots in Moon 's center spread and, more importantly, the texts are indigestible barrages of topic sentences unsupported by diagrams, indexes, glossaries, bibliographies or, in the case of Planet Earth , even picture captions. Visual delights, but empty calories next to Patricia Lauber's meaty Seeing Earth from Space (Orchard, 1990) or Seymour Simon's astronomy books (Morrow). --John Peters, New York Public Library