by Seymour Simon

HarperCollins, May, 2002.
Picture Book, 32 pages.
ISBN: 0688162894
Ages 5 and up

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST), has continued to bring us stunning photographs of worlds that exist beyond our imagination. Seymour Simon, author of many acclaimed children's books on space, is our guide in this beautiful and informative book on the latest knowledge that we have gained from this telescope in space. The value of HST is that it can send back pictures from space without the light pollution that we have to deal with on earth.

Each stunning photograph shows us places undreamed of by our most creative flights of fancy. Turn a page and an even more fantastic photograph awaits; the explanations of the phenomena in the photographs is explained in easy to comprehend language. Each page will add to the reader's vocabulary and understanding of what we are discovering on a regular basis from HST. Photographs of the Eagle Nebula show columns that are blisters on the side of cold, dark gas. The Eagle Nebula is a star-forming part of our own Milky Way. Another page shows a "butterfly" nebula, so beautiful and ethereal that the imagination is stretched. Mr. Simon explains that it may be caused by a very close pair of stars and that one may be swallowing the other. On another page we see a color photograph of a collision of two galaxies. The beauties of these photographs soon exhaust our feeble vocabularies and ability to describe. These sights must be experienced by the young space travelers of tomorrow. It can never be forgotten that we are educating our children to live in worlds we have yet to experience ourselves.

It is easy to see why Mr. Simon is such an acclaimed author of science books for children. A young person who reads this book will be brought up to date on all our latest discoveries about the universe beyond our beautiful blue planet. Perhaps we cannot go there yet, but the dream of doing so must be nurtured, and Mr. Simon is the author to do it. Actually, the adult reader can be brought up to date on the explosion of discoveries about what awaits us beyond our own solar system. Destination: Space is a book that a child will enjoy and it will be equally enjoyed by the adult looking over his shoulder.

--Sarah Reaves White

Destination: Space is available for purchase on Amazon.com

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This review was published in the July-August, 2002 of The Internet Writing Journal.

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