A Traveler's Guide to the Solar System - Softcover

Barnes-Svarney, Patricia

3.33

6 ratings by Goodreads

9781402726286: A Traveler's Guide to the Solar System

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1402726287 ISBN 13: 9781402726286

Publisher: Union Square Kids, 2008

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What would it be like to walk on a Martian plain? Watch wild volcanoes on Jupiter? All it takes to find out is a touch of imagination and this entertaining guide to the solar system, illustrated with NASA’s most up-to-date color photos. So get ready to blast off, and fly through the skies from Mercury to Pluto, stopping to visit planets, asteroids, and moons along the way. Feel Venus’s intense pressure and heat, thanks to a thick blanket of carbon dioxide. Alight on Saturn and gaze at its beautiful and mysterious rings. See greenish-blue Uranus, which takes 84 Earth-years to travel round the sun. There’s lots of fun information, related in a simple, appealing style kids will easily understand and enjoy.

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From School Library Journal:

Grade 4-6-The author of several books on earth science takes readers further afield, offering a series of quick visits to "some of the best-and some of the worst-places in our solar system." Stopping at each planet, plus selected moons, Barnes-Svarney focuses on extremes-the surface temperature of Venus, for instance, or Saturn's 1,000 mph winds-and unusual sights, such as Mimas's huge crater or the "Gumbly feature" on Venus. The illustrations, all photos from NASA and other space agencies, are reproduced in glowing colors, with some of the composites and false-color images noted as such. Despite a predeliction for exclamation points, the author's descriptions are clear and coherent. The picture captions are another story; two are switched, at least one contradicts a point made in the text, and another was apparently written for a different photo. Considering the recent proliferation of books on the planets, this one can be passed over. Buy another copy of Seymour Simon's Our Solar System (Morrow, 1992) instead.
John Peters, New York Public Library
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

Gr. 4-6. For better or for worse, the author of this guidebook to the solar system acts like a tour guide: often informative, a bit too fond of exclamation points, jocular without being really funny, and predictable by the end of the trip. With a chapter on each planet (except Earth) and its moons and one for the asteroid belt, the author continues the travel theme throughout, sometimes with absurd results: "Saturn's lower layers are under great pressure--close to 10 million times the pressures of the Earth. Can we stand them? Not without a very good space suit!" Excellent full-color photographs appear on nearly every page. While many better books are available on the solar system, larger libraries may want to have this on hand for those "How much would you weigh on Neptune?" and "How old would you be on Mercury?" assignments that come around from time to time. Carolyn Phelan

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