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Rating: 
Summary: Surprized by this inexpensive book
Review: At first glance, this Golden Book looked too cluttered and cheesey. Most pages contain "fact" secions with cartoon-type illustrations. The first reading with my four year-old son proved my initial impression wrong. Each of the cluttered, cheesy illustrations further explains a point in a way that was appealing to my son. The book does a very nice job of explaining our solar system to a preschooler. It starts as describing our solar system as a neighborhood. It presents interesting information about our sun, moon, and space travel, including living in space. Limited information is presented on the planets, meteors, asteroids, and comets. Each planet is very briefly described in only one or two sentences. As an example, the infomation on Jupiter does not mention the red spot. A two-page spread of cartoon does a good, age-appropriate job of explaining what we do and do not know about space aliens. It's presented in a question and answer format between a girl and a grown man. Fast facts about the planets are contained on another two-page spread. A graphic displays the planets relative sizes and lists their sizes in miles and kilometers. For each planet, information is given under headings of: Big or small, Surface (rocky, hard, soft, etc.), Hot or cold, Interesting fact, and Moons. The number of rings on the gas giants is not compared, nor is the information on each planet robust. The final two pages contain space related puzzles and their answers. All are appropriate for my four year old. Because of the format and illustrations, this book is very appealing to my children. The cartoon illustrations provide a special appeal. The lack of actual photographs don't seem to bother them. For it's price, it's hard to beat the amount of interest my preschoolers have in this book.
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