Exploration Sky Watch

Gr 3—4—The texts in these quick once-overs are at times compressed to the point of incoherence. For example, Exploration states, "Pioneer 10 was the first craft to reach Jupiter in 1973. Others followed, but NASA's Galileo spacecraft was made to study Jupiter." The book confusingly starts with Voyager I (1977) then goes back to the Apollo program and speeds along to the planned near-future launch of Gaia. Sky Watch presents a highly selective parade of telescopes from Galileo's to the 2009 launch of the Kepler Telescope. In both volumes, small blocks of explanatory text, scattered captions, and "Xtreme Fact" boxes flank or are superimposed on an undifferentiated mix of space photos and artists conceptions. Also, the lack of leads to further sources of information compounds their superficiality. Leave these titles on the launch pad.—John Peters, formerly at New York Public Library