Star Guide (Voyage into Space Book)

Describes the composition and behavior of stars and notes which ones can be seen at different times of the year.

Grade 3-6 A general discussion of what can be seen in the night sky, ending with five star maps for observers in the northern hemisphere. The black-and-white drawings help bring home a few interesting points. To show the distances of stars, a drawing of a rocket attempting to reach Proxima Centauri is shown at the bottom of most right-hand pages. While the Earth and the Sun are only apart in this scale, the rocket has gone only 1/250 of the way by the end of the book. Branley's brief description of star types contains some oversimplifications. The worst of these is the twice-made statement that neutrons and atomic cores are the same thing. On balance, this is a fairly presentable slim book which falls between the easier Night Sky (Watts, 1986) by N. S. Barrett and the longer Star Gazing, Comet Tracking and Sky Mapping (Putnam, 1985) by Melvin Berger in the completeness of its introduction to the stars. Margaret Chatham, formerly at Smithtown Library, N.Y.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.