5-MINUTE SPACE STORIES
From the 5-Minute Discovery Stories series
by Gabby Dawnay ; illustrated by Mona K
Personable planets and animated astronomical bodies introduce themselves in spirited verse.
Dawnay presents 10 poems of regular four-beat rhyming couplets (iambs and anapests), with a fact-filled page after each chapter. In proud, sometimes sassy voices, personified celestial bodies directly address readers; among them, the characters we meet are the moon, Earth, the entire solar system, the four “rocky” terrestrial planets, the four gas giants, the “remnants” (asteroids, meteoroids, comets, debris), the Milky Way, the sun, the five dwarf planets (Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris), and finally a nebula cloud, a “nursery” for new planetary bodies. The bright, cheerful illustrations stylize the astral objects. Stars have sharp points; the nebula beams. Eyebrows and lashes adorn some eyes, while others are round or almond-shaped. Usually the heavenly bodies are simply round faces, but an occasional hand or tongue protrudes. Colors can convey astronomical information: Saturated blues suggest the depths of space or the gaseous ice giants; red, the iron of Mars or hot meteors (but cold Jupiter is also red); green, Earth’s vegetation. These versified vehicles for information are impressively precise and enlightening.
Aspiring astronauts will be starstruck.
(further reading) (Nonfiction. 5-7)