Customer Reviews

The Stars

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H. A. Rey is best known for his "Curious George" stories, but he was a scientist by profession and he also wrote two books on stargazing for children. If you have a child who is interested in the stars, this book is delightful and highly readable. And if YOU are interested in the stars, dont hesitate to get it for yourself! Rey has a unique way of showing the constellations: he actually went through the trouble of drawing lines between the stars of a constellation to form a meaningful picture - so Gemini (the twins) actually looks like a pair of twins, Cetus (the whale) looks like a whale, and so forth. A word of warning: to form these pictures, Rey often had to rely on dim stars. Don't expect to see them from the city! Access to a dark country sky is essential to get the most out of this book. That said, "The Stars" makes the mastery of stargazing accessible and fun for children and adults alike.

One winter night during junior high, I glanced up at the night sky and out of the corner of my eye I saw a small silverly cloud. A closer look revealed a small cluster of six tiny stars. "Hmmm," I said to myself,"I wonder what that is?" I remembered an old book I had on my shelf called "The Stars." So went and after a quick search, realized that the cluster was called the Pleiades and they are part of Taurus. "Cool," I thought, and I sat down to read the whole book through.

This is my all-time favorite book from my youth. I have many, many memeories of me and my dad spending hours up on the roof at night, looking at this book through our red-painted flashlight, naming the stars and tracing the constellations. We did this at least once a week for several years, during all seasons. Even to this day, almost 40 years later, I look up in the sky and immediately see old and comforting friends that haven't changed since then. And I feel like I know where I am.

Then during college, I took a photocopy of the book to Kenya, where I lived for a semester in the bush. This time, Kenya being on the equator, I had the pleasure of meeting new friends; the constellations of the Southern Hemisphere. Way cool.

I have given this book as a gift to friends, children of friends, just about anyone who I have seen glancing into the nightime sky.

So now I just bought myself a brand new copy; I'm going to Sri Lanka to help with disaster relief and, alas, my original cloth-bound hardcover 1962 edition is just to old to make the journey with me. However, I am very eager to re-aquaint myself with those friends I first made back in the African sky.

I have to say that Rey's method for showing the constellations outdoes everyone elses: Gemeni looks like two stick figures (note the cover illustration), Orion a hunter, Scorpio a scorpion, etc. Every other illustration I have ever seen has shown the constellations as apparently random lines between random points. This makes it nearly impossible to see the constellations for what they are. And I don't understand why other publication such as magazines and newspapers don't use Rey's system. Copyright issues, perhaps?

This book is an amazing gift that will inspire you and/or your kids, and it's a great way to spend time and bond with him/her/them. I take it whenever I travel, and I always find it is a great way to get people, young and old, curious, excited, and interacting. I can't speak highly enough.

This book is great, allow me to say again it is great. I noticed it used as a reference book at M.I.T. and I was intrigued. I had thought it was a book for children, and it is. But, it is also a book for anyone with a desire to learn to identify heavenly objects. If you've a beginning interest in astronomy buy this book, it's reader friendly.

I found this book in a library as a young child in 1978. After renewing it as many times as I could, my mother bought me a copy. This book started a lifetime love of observational Astronomy that continues to this day. I still have that very book now--it is worn, marked, ripped, and the cover has fallen off--but it is still a book that I pull out from time to time.

Rey's method of teaching Astronomy is to keep things as simple and basic as possible. If all you want to do is recognize the constellations in the sky and know when to see them, then you read the first three chapters. If you want to learn a bit more about celestial mechanics, then you read further. You learn as much as you want to. Rey's outlines of the constellations are innovative in that that really LOOK like what the constellations are supposed to represent. The first time I used this book to find constellations (at age eight) I was able to pick out a few even in the light polluted skies of the SF Bay Area.

The only criticism that I have for this book (which only popped up when I reached adulthood) is that in order to draw some of his realistic outlines of the constellations, Rey needed to incorporate a number of faint stars that can only be seen in areas that have very dark skies at night. Under such conditions there are so many stars peppering the heavens (that are not on Rey's charts) that an amateur could be overwhelmed and get lost. Despite this quibbling, I still consider this book to be the best introductory work on Astronomy around, no matter what age the reader. I've seen lots of other "Astronomy 101" books--some are good, some are great, but after 50 years of being in print, "The Stars" has yet to be beat.

The reviews on this book are remarkably accurate. This is not a childrens' book. Even though decades have passed since it was first published, no other text has been able to bump it off a 'best in class' position. If you want to look to the sky for familiar shapes, this is the book for you.

There are a couple of fundamental ways to study the heavens. A 'modern' approach might be to put your head down, click in a few celestial coordiantes, and wait for the telescope to find a target for you. However a more interesing approach would be to find shape in the sky and locate targets manually. To do that you need to recognize those old landmarks in the sky, the constellations.

The big problem in identifying constellations is to find shape from seemingly random dots. Ray creatively used the same stars, but made 'new' stick diagrams that actually look like what they are supposed to represent. This makes a constellation much easier to visualize, remember, and recognize later. Other texts that attempt this effort fall short because they don't emphasize visual recognition clues.

A major fault of modern texts is the inclusion of unnecessary detail. Ray puts in a few choice details that help the memory and add interesting character to the figures in the sky. But by excluding minutia he draws the reader back to the goal at hand. Ultimately you need to memorize a blueprint of the sky, and this workbook will be your best friend to help reach that goal. Bravo.

Anyone who can create a lovable character like Curious George, and write a fantastic, educational, enjoyable astronomy book, is a very special person indeed. The Stars has been my number one reference book for the nighttime sky for the past 35 years. Many, many other books have come and gone, but the STARS is indespensible. It is great for children and great for adults. It is highly untechnical, just what a person needs if he wants to ENJOY the night sky but not major in astronomy. The book is rich in the myths that gave the constellations their names, adding a delightful dimension to the joy of stargazing. If you get one astonomy book for your home, this has to be the one. Phil Chernofsky, Jerusalem

Here is a book review of an old book, written by H. A. Rey, the author of the "Curious George" books (no relation to me!). _The Stars: A New Way to See Them_ was first written in 1952. Houghton-Mifflin's 3rd edition, dated 1973, is available in bookstores and online at Amazon.com. I recently picked up a used 1966 edition.

Rey's book was written for children to help them learn to recognize the constellations. As you may know, few of the constellations seem to resemble the character or object they are supposed to represent. It takes an awfully good imagination to see Bootes as a shepherd, or Auriga as a charioteer, or Aries as a ram. Rey takes those same star patterns and rearranges the lines to produce stick figures that actually look like something. Not only that, they have the appearance of the intended object or character of mythology. Perseus looks like he's coming to Andromeda's rescue. Monoceros looks like a stick-figure unicorn, and Camelopardalis looks like a skinny giraffe.

Rey's book _The Stars_ is laid out in four parts: Part 1 is "Shapes in the Sky", where he describes old and new ways of arranging the stars. Part 2 is "Meet the Constellations", where he shows a diagram of each constellation and gives a bit of information about it. In Part 3, "The Stars Throughout the Year" he has twelve sets of calendar charts - with and without the lines drawn in -- and explains that the sky is always changing, as the earth travels in its path around the sun. Additional calendar charts include viewing areas farther north and south than most of us are familiar with. Part 4, "Some Whys and Hows" goes into some technical details on the celestial sphere, the path of the ecliptic, why we have seasons, the earth's orbit, solar and sidereal time, precession, and other topics for those with an inquiring scientific mind. It is not necessary to read or understand this section to enjoy the book, but it adds to its value as a learning tool. Rey tells about the moon and its phases, gives a good description of a cross-section of the Milky Way galaxy, and gives some facts about the planets. The planetary tables won't do me much good in the twenty-first century, though. My 1966 edition has planetary tables from 1961 through 1970. The newer edition may have updated tables, however. A 2001 reviewer of the book on Amazon.com says it has planetary tables for the next ten years.

The back pages of the book contain a good index and glossary, a whole-sky chart, an index to the constellations by their English names and by their classical Latin names, and a list of the twenty brightest stars. Hans Augusto Rey has provided enough information in this little 160-page book to satisfy any "Curious George", me included.>Now, if you prefer the classical representations of the constellations, you might not care for Rey's rearrangement of their appearance. For instance, the tail of the Great Bear becomes her nose, and Hercules's body becomes his head. But at least the figures are memorable, and if it helps kids - or adults - to learn the star patterns in the night sky, I would say it has accomplished a lot. I highly recommend this book to stargazers everywhere, young or old. Amateur astronomers can use it to help young people and astronomy novices get comfortable with wandering the skies at night.

This book is best for the casual astronomer, but generally speaking it's not for somebody who's serious about the hobby. Why? H.A. Rey's book does not show the constellations using the time-tested line segments between the stars of the constellations. Rey's way of drawing the constellations may be a bit more intuitive for some, but the downside is that Rey's "new way to see" the constellations means that nobody else in the astronomy community uses this "new way".

That means if you read Rey's book and then use a planisphere or star chart any other observing aid, the constellations' connections will look "wrong" because you learned Rey's star connections rather than the conventional connections. Therefore, if you learn constellations from Rey's book then be prepared to re-learn the conventional constellation segments once you graduate to any other astronomical reference.

In contrast, Heifetz/Tirion's book "A Walk Through the Heavens" teaches you to find contellations which are drawn using more conventional line segments between the stars. Thus I recommend Heifetz/Tirion's "A Walk Through the Heavens" to any beginning astronomer who considers themselves more than a casual observer.

This book cannot be recommended, enough. Being an amateur astonomer for 30 years and having studied many "backyard" astronomy books, it was a revelation to find this book. It changed my view of stars for ever! Other books struggled to make you recognize the constellations by trying to "fit" them in patterns that either did not match the names and sometimes were silly. Rey managed to show us that "Cetus" constellation looks like a cetus really, and the same go for the rest of them. As an experienced (?) amateur astronome I usually turn to this book to refresh my view of the stars. I take it with me to star parties and I should say that at least 7 out of 10 people who see it, buy it. There is always a place for this book beside my photographic atlases of the sky and my astronomomical computer software which show thousands of stars more, but lack the fascination to look at bears and whale in the sky...

When Albert Einstein, my Astrophysics professor, and the head Scoutmaster of America all highly recommend a book, what a book it must be! H.A. Rey's _The Stars_ whimsically and insightfully introduces you to the constellations. (Fans of Curious George will love his illustrations.) The book is acclaimed because Rey's constellation pictures actually make sense! Moreover, the last section 'Some Whys and Hows', clearly and wittily explains basic astronomy -- why the sky changes throughout the year, why you can see different constellations in the Southern hemisphere, why the Zodiac constellations are special, and more. This last section was invaluable in my first astrophysics course.