Our Space Place: Explore My World: Planets by Becky Baines

Viewed from space, Earth appears to be a small blue, white, and green ball hanging in space.

But we know that down on earth, we are the only planet in the best place for us--in the Goldilocks Zone, just right for humans, not too hot, not too cold, with water and different climates that suit forms of life like plants and animals. The planets closer to the sun, Mercury and Venus, are rocky planets like Earth, but too close to the sun for us to live.

WARM SUNSHINE, FLUFFY SNOWFLAKES,

STORMY SHOWERS, FALLING AUTUMN SHOWERS.

The planets closest to the sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, are rocky planets with minerals, but Earth has more moderate seasons of hot and cold compared to its neighbor rocky planets. Mercury and Venus are to hot for humans, and Mars is too cold and dry for us to live on without supplies brought from earth.

In Becky Baines' Explore My World Planets (National Geographic Books), preschool and primary students are introduced to our solar system, visiting not only the rocky planets, but also the giant planets beyond Mars--Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

THERE ARE FOUR GAS GIANTS THAT SWIRL WAY OUT IN SPACE. THEY DON'T HAVE HARD GROUND LIKE THE ROCKY PLANETS.

But the "gas giants" are huge. Some have rings, like Saturn, and many moons, like Jupiter. And out beyond Neptune, there's much more to our solar system--

FIVE TEENY-TINY PLANETS, CALLED DWARF PLANETS, CAN BE FOUND IN OUR SOLAR SYSTEM, TOO SMALL TO BE CALLED PLANETS BUT TOO BIG TO BE JUST ROCKS, LIKE PLUTO.

Author Baines explains in simple language that the solar system is huge, so large that it would take years in a spaceship reach the closest planet, Mars. But as Baines says, our galaxy, The Milky Way, has at least 500 solar systems (planets orbiting a star like the sun) and that's only one galaxy in the universe.

Baines' beginning book gives the youngest space scientist a eye-opening, mind-expanding view beyond the world we live in, with photos from space telescopes, artwork and charts that help the picture the almost unbelieveable world of outer space.

MAYBE ONE DAY WHEN YOU'RE GROWN, YOU WILL BE ABLE TO ROCKET TO MARS. UNTIL THEN, LOOK UP AT THE NIGHT SKY, IMAGINE WHAT ELSE IS OUT THERE!

Share this one with Bruce Betts' My First Book of Planets: All About the Solar System for Kids.