Mike Goldsmith

If books like this existed when I was in primary and middle school, I think my relationship with numbers would have been a lot different.I was so entertained with the material of the book and even tried doing the activities. the vivid colors and the small cartoons give so much personality to this book. It has a little bit of everything and I loved seeing how our brain works the optical illusions and the mazes.

I loved this book so much, that I am considering using it in the future! The illustrations tie in perfectly with the main topic of the book and do a great job of explaining different concepts. For example, on page 15 the illustrations portrayed show why the ground shakes when an earthquake occurs. Without using the captions given (which is great that the author/illustrator decided to add features as such), one can understand what is happening and answer the question: Why does the ground show more shake?
I think that this book would be perfect to be used during a guided reading because teachers can observe students as they read and use different features in the book to try and create meaning. Furthermore, teachers could use this to also do some "word work" practice with key, tricky, or new difficult words that the students may encounter while reading. The book can be a great tool for encouraging new readers to interact with the reading and indulge in the book because the book contains multiple flaps with questions that students can flip over and find the answers. For example, on the fourth page of the book the following questions are listed: 1. What is a planet?, 2. Does Earth really spin?, 3. Why does it get dark at night? If the student flips the flap, the answers will be shown. The author and illustrator allow students to explore a little and learn different things that they may not have known while motivating them to interact with the book as well. show less

I gave this book a 5/5. This book has a bunch of diagrams on the page, this would be a great book to show how students should observe other aspects than just the text. I also really like how the book has questions inside it. This is important because the questions the book has might be the same questions students are thinking. Then, on the back of the flap it answers those questions. Children love asking about earth questions and I believe this book does a great job answering some common show more ones in an interesting and fun way. show less

This attention-catching book is mainly exploring the extraordinary phenomenas of the universe. One chapter states that there is a massive blackhole right outside our solar system, and the more galaxies or planets it absorbs, the bigger it gets. Additionally, traveling to space costs approximately a billion dollars; going to the moon or Mars would cost tens of billions of dollars and since 1972 our spaceships, with people on them, haven't advanced pass the moon. Furthermore, our immune system show more isn't as effective as it is with gravity, so the bacteria can grow up to fifty times faster. This book is a big tour of the universe, such as the near by planets and moons in the Milky Way, stars, galaxies, and blackholes. The impressive illustrations on these pages give off vivid imagery for the readers.
In my personal opinion, I found this book very educational, and I learned a lot from it. My favorite part was learning about the gigantic blackhole because just thinking about it was very frightening. My least favorite part was about Mars; I don't find Mars very fascinating. Overall, this book did teach me a lot about space, and more about our universe. I would recommend this book to kids who are intrigued in space and like to study astronomy. To conclude, I found it as a learning experience about everything not just in the Milky Way, but way beyond our galaxy. show less