Book Buds Kidlit Reviews

Poor Pluto, but lucky us

The Planet Hunter: The Story Behind What Happened to Pluto
by Elizabeth Rusch; illustrated by Guy Francis

Rising Moon

I boast a stargazer or two in my household. My son has rocket ship sheets on his bed, glowing stars on his wall and a real telescope my husband props on the balcony when they feel like braving the icy winds off Lake Michigan.

This book didn't last two seconds out of the package before both my little spaceman and my big one were hunched over it, reading, pointing and exclaiming. Something about the hubbub over Pluto really gets amateur astronomers going, and mine aren't the only ones.

In case you've been living on an asteroid, Pluto got bumped from the planet club last year after astronomers decided there were too many other Pluto-esque balls of ice and rock floating around the same neighborhood. It just wasn't special enough after all.

Nothing could make such a phenomenon hit closer than dramatizing it as a personal quest. Rusch cuts through the science and brings us a gripping, highly readable story of one persistent, likable young astronomer determined to find another planet in the Kuiper belt at the very fringes of the solar system.

We follow Mike Brown from his boyhood making moon craters in his muddy backyard to his adult years and the ingenious system he developed to detect new heavenly bodies using an old observatory telescope. How exciting to see his discoveries one by one, laid out in funny side notes that explain their names (he dubbed one "Santa" after the red-suited Christmas visitor) and some weird facts about them. We feel his excitement--and determination--build as he wonders what, exactly, he's stumbled upon.

There's no ending to spoil; Brown's adventures go on and on. Somewhere out there, peering into space, the man who forced a re-examining of certain celestial truths is still happily mapping his piece of heaven.

Rating: *\*\*\

POETRY FRIDAY Starstruck

Comets, Stars, The Moon and Mars
by Douglas Florian

I honestly don't know why the WaPo didn't love this book. Elizabeth Ward drubbed the verses as having "all the verve of a mnemonic." I disagree, and not just because the publisher mistakenly sent me three copies.

Check out the charming wordplay in Saturn, for example:

Saturn's rings turn round Saturn.
Its moons turn round it, too.
Saturn, by turns, turns round the sun
Saturning through and through.

And then there's this pithy summation of Pluto's woes:

Pluto was a planet.
Pluto was admired.
Pluto was a planet.
Till one day it got fired.

Mnemonic? Maybe, if in the sense it'll help fix the planets and other heavenly bodies more firmly in a child's memory. But aside from a few clunkers like the Uranus one Ward cites, most of this collection sparkles.

Florian avoids the kiddie poetry cliches that drive me nuts: he varies his meter and rhyme schemes, he fiddles and diddles with meanings, his images occasionally startle, and he's playful and witty at almost every turn, but gets his facts straight.

And the art! He primed brown paper bags (how's that for recycling?) and used great swashes of wet, drippy color, and then interspersed bits of paper and stamped letters, all tied together thematically to each poem. Check out the little cut-outs too, which open windows onto different pages.

But don't be fooled; these collages only look messy and spontaneous. It's all still uncluttered and carefully composed, and rife with visual puns and fun diversions, a perfect foil to his verses.

Take the Pluto poem again--our poor, demoted pal is stamped with letters spelling rock? hard place? dog? stone? ufo? oddball? etc. I found myself resisting the urge to utterly decimate his copyright and recreate the art as giant murals in my son's space-themed bedroom.

Rating: *\*\*\*\

Moonstruck all over again

Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon

by Catherine Thimmesh

True story: I was in fifth grade and Ken Barry was bragging over lunch about his Dad this, his Dad that. I don't remember what was so special about his Dad, but I knew my Dad had some sort of weird occupation -- CPA -- whatever that was.

So I went for the old standby.

"Well, my Uncle Sol ... "

"I don't care if your Uncle Sol built the Apollo moon rocket!" Ken said.

"Well, he DID!"

You shoulda seen the expression on his face. Heh.

Sol Boles, a radar and sonar engineer with Grumman Aircraft, was a legend in our family. He had a house full of moon memorabilia, including a real moon rock and a poster autographed by the entire Apollo 11 team. He happened to be in Washington, D.C. one year while we were vacationing and led us through the newly opened National Air & Space Museum -- followed by a small throng who mistook him for a docent.

Uncle Sol would've been pleased with Thimmesh's tribute to the many people who put together the triumphant Apollo 11 mission. She recaptures some of its glow for a new generation with spectacular photos, excerpts from transcripts and interviews from some unusual contributors, including a seamstress who helped make the space suits.

Although I fall in love with Neil Armstrong all over again every time I read about him (I had a big crush on him as a moonstruck six-year-old), it's good to remember we did this as a nation. Everyone played their part in figuring out how to achieve President Kennedy's deceptively simple exhortation "of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

Thimmesh breaks the mission down into its separate challenges, whether it was unexpected alarms or a near-empty fuel tank, and includes photos of many of the contributors in the back.

I love the seamstress, Eleanor Foracker, best:

"We didn't worry too much until the guys on the moon started jumping up and down."

A few caveats: Thimmesh's narration is on the dry side, and sounds a bit book-reportish. You've seen many of the moon pics before and there's always plenty more available straight from NASA's website.

But you'd be hard pressed to find a kid's book more thorough in its presentation of mission minutiae, or one that includes so many voices.

Rating: *\*\*\

Waxing and waning

How the Moon Regained Her Shape

by Janet Ruth Heller; illustrated by Ben Hodson

That mean ol' Sun, always flaring up at everyone. He roars at Moon, getting her all out of shape. But when she sees how many friends she has among animals and people on Earth, she perks up, poor girl.

Told and drawn as a Native American folk tale (I'm thinking Pacific Northwest?), the story should help kids understand how they can retreat from bullies and stick by the folks who love them. And, oh yeah, there's all these cool phases of the moon to learn about too.

As with most titles from this publisher, there's nifty facts and project ideas in the back.

Rating: *\*\

Starry night

Pieces of Another World

by Mara Rockliff; illustrated by Salima Alikhan

Jody’s Dad wakes her late at night, but won’t say where they’re going. To see “pieces of another world” is her only clue. Not until their pick-up rattles into a dark forest clearing does she learn she’s there to see a meteor shower.

The suspense builds swiftly by repeating the signature phrase in different contexts until Jody pieces together what her father means. The text is set in white against the deep, purlply-blue hues of midnight speckled with stars. Alikhan’s watercolors are wet and lush, bleeding and washing into each other, as every picture seems to melt into the vast, starlit sky. Her small town in the wee hours is lonely and quiet, her forest thrums with unseen life.

Astronomy activities in the back are worth letting older kids stay awake for.

Rating: *\*\*\

Out of this world

Next Stop Neptune

by Alvin Jenkins; illustrated by Steve Jenkins

One of Neptune’s moons is so cold, its volcanoes erupt liquid gas instead of lava, and even that instantly freezes. Dang, that’s cold. And if you drove to Uranus at 60 m.p.h. without ever stopping, it’d take 3,200 years. I’m never complaining about my hubby’s commute again.

This is one cool book, filled with quirky facts like how big Earth would be if the sun were the size of a basketball (about as small as a pea). Alvin Jenkins is a retired physics and astronomy professor who’s teamed up with his son, Steve, a graphic designer. But for all the senior Jenkins’ mind-boggling factoids, it’s his son whose illustrations really wow.

He conjures up our entire solar system from torn paper: Jupiter erupts in fierce electrical storms, sunspots swirl and solar flares leap, and craters dot even the smallest asteroids.

My only nit was that he failed to render the familiar face of our moon, choosing instead to use flecked bits of gray paper without the most familiar valleys and empty “seas” that anyone can spot on a cloudless night.

Note: a School Library Journal review posted on Amazon.com also notes a number of factual errors in the book, most notably locating a famous volcano on the wrong planet and assigning Pluto a wrong orbit. For that reason, I'm downgrading the rating.

Rating: *\*\