Customer Reviews

Eye Wonder: Space (Eye Wonder)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

As soon as we opened this book, my inquisitive 5-year-old was hooked. It is filled with interesting facts about our solar system, written on a level just perfect for ages 4-8 (the target age group for these books). The pictures and graphics are rich and colorful. I bought "Ocean", too, and now we often read these books instead of good-night stories. Each 2-page spread contains so much to see and discuss that it takes the place of a standard good-night story.
Here's an example: "A planet's year is the time it takes to make one full journey (orbit) around the Sun.... Planets with the biggest orbits have the longest years." For a kid who is just beginning to comprehend how long a year is, it's interesting to toy with the idea that a "year" is a different amount of time on each planet. Ok, it's a stretch, and I don't think my 5-year-old really understood, but that's just one example of the types of things we sit and talk about after looking at this book. Fun!
So if your child is curious about the sun, moon and planets, I would really recommend this book. (Even for older kids, frankly. My mother and I both enjoy it and learned from it. And it's much more interesting to read and look at than a typical story book.)

I purchased this book for a four year old boy and he loved it. The pictures are excellent and the descriptions are brief and accurate (enough for a four year old). This is a great supplement book for the price. Yes, there are better space books out there.

My son loves anything to do about space and that includes this book whichhe loves to show his cousins... Thanks

Concise information and lovely pictures. My 6 year old who is now all into space just sits with this book and after reading it is full of information to share with the family

I read this book out loud to my boys (age 9 and 13). The formatting and amount of text per page made the book suitable for reading together, unlike many other books of this type which are jam-packed and cluttered.

The book has a logical progression and devotes two pages to each planet/theme. It has some concepts that we hadn't encountered before in other introductory space books, for example the Oort cloud. Kudos to the author and editor, Simon Holland (Carole Stott is officially credited as the space consultant, not the author).

There are interesting photographs on each page.

The cover of this book shows a giant Earth with celestial bodies orbiting around it. So I took a chance and ordered the book. I should have checked the table of contents first. As it turns out, this book is just another typical book pushing the Copernicus based heliocentric model of the universe. As usual with this type of book, the author makes no attempt to prove the theory (which states) that the Earth revolves around the Sun. He pretends that it is already an established fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
(Based on the observable evidence, The Earth is completely stationary, and does not orbit around anything.)

This book also claims that men have walked on the moon. But it presents no real evidence to support such a claim. Instead, it presents a photo of a man pretending to be on the moon, which I admit looks pretty cool. But it doesn't prove anything.

There are subtle aspects of this book which make it clear that the author is intentionally trying to mislead and steer the reader into the idea that we (as a society) should continue giving NASA money to "explore space".

Here is an interesting set of quotes from the book, "The first telescopes were made around 400 years ago. They were not as powerful or accurate as today's equipment"... "Today, astronomers do not even have to look into the sky themselves, because their telescopes have special computers that can collect the information for them." The book then addresses the topic of "radio telescopes".

Fundamentally, the author is trying to blur the line between reality and science fiction.

In the real physical world, a telescope using a magnifying glass represents reality, whereas a "radio telescope" represents science fiction. No astronomer has ever seen anything more than fuzzy lights when looking at the stars using a magnifying glass. All of these spectacular and colorful photos of deep space that we see in books and on TV are computer generated images, based on parameters which are set up by "scientists". They do not represent anything that is factually visible. The word "telescope" refers to the visual realm. So it is dishonest to call a "radio telescope" a telescope. A radio telescope is not a telescope at all.

Generally speaking, this book is beyond suspicious.