Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars: Space Poems and Paintings by Douglas Florian

Florian, Douglas. Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars: Space Poems and Paintings. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Books Inc., 2007. ISBN: 978-0-15-205372-7.

SUMMARY

Take a galactic tour through the universe with Douglas Florian as your tour guide, and listen as he describes its beautiful and unique stellar bodies in his poetic voice. Florian captures the playfulness of our universe in his collection of poems that describe the universe and the familiar objects found within its endless expanse. While he is able to stay with the facts, his talent brings them to life and makes learning about the stars, moons, and planets a memorable experience. His use of rhyme and rhythm will make learning about the universe pleasurable and fun, and may even lead the reader into wanting to learn more about its wonders.

ANALYSIS

Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars: Space Poems and Paintings takes an ordinary science lesson and turns it into a big bang of color, sound, rhythm, and rhyme. With humorous twists woven into scientific facts, Douglas Florian's poetic flare and brilliant illustrations radiate from page to page as the reader travels through the splendor of our solar system and the universe that surrounds it.

The uniqueness of each celestial object and planet is described in equally unique poems that highlight and give vivid images of their special qualities. He describes Mercury using a small, quick poem: "Speedy, nimble, quick, and fast,/Round the sun it rushes past./Always racing on the run.../You'd run, too, so near the sun." Saying this poem aloud, the words race through the mouth, emphasizing the planet's fast pace around its orbit.  On the other end of the planet spectrum, Jupiter's size is made very clear: "Jupiter's jumbo,/Gigantic,/Immense,/So wide/Side to side,/But gaseous, not dense./With some sixteen moons/It's plainly prolific -/So super-dupiter/Jupiterrific!" Florian's flare for combining words and creating new words creates the rhythm and rhyme to make a poem catchy and memorable.  Better than the drabness of facts found in informational books, Florian's readers will be sure to remember that Mercury orbits the sun quickly, while Jupiter is a huge gas planet after reading these two poems.

He even includes Pluto's demotion as a planet in his poem, "Pluto": "Pluto was a planet./But now it doesn't pass./Pluto was a planet./They say it's lacking mass./Pluto was a planet./Pluto was admired./Pluto was a planet./Till one day it got fired." Using the repetition of the phrase, "Pluto was a planet," Florian's point is well made. The clever rhyming scheme in the alternating lines interjected with "Pluto was a planet," lend to the catchiness of the poem. The last line shows the finality of Pluto's fate, a sad moment for many old-schoolers.

Included in the book is a table of contents, a Galactic Glossary of objects in the universe, and a bibliography for further reading about the wonders of the universe. As always, Douglas Florian's poems in Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars: Space Poems and Paintings are witty, fun, memorable, and entertaining. Florian fans will love this book, first time Florian readers will want to read more of his poetry, and astronomers may actually take a break from the seriousness of science to enjoy a pleasant chuckle while reading Florian's spin on the universe!

AWARDS

Best Children's Books of the Year. 2008. - Bank Street College of Education, United States

Kirkus Best Children's Books. 2007. - Kirkus, United States

Mind the Gap Award. 2008. - Best summation of the Pluto problem, United States

Texas Bluebonnet Award. 2008-2009. Masterlist, Texas

...and many more!

SUGGESTED ACTIVITY

Create a poetry and science theme bulletin board of the universe that features a photograph or digitally created image of the sun, its planets, and the other components that complete it. Place a Douglas Florian poem next to the image it describes. For a technology twist, have the students type the poems using a word-processor. 

Comets, Stars the Moon, and Mars: Space Poems and Paintings. cover illustration. Internet on-line.  Retrieved February 10, 2013  from: http://www.flr.follett.com/search?SID=f5a7ae1307db7a5a897ec8fe601555b5