Stargazers by M. Lowe

Maria Lowe

Gibbons, Gail. Stargazers / by Gail Gibbons. New York : Holiday House, 1992. ISBN: 082340983X. (Ages 6-9)

Gail Gibbons' Stargazers starts with a family looking up at the sky at twilight, waiting for the first stars to appear. In doing this Gibbons starts the reader at a familiar point of reference as most children have done some stargazing. From there she presents a new idea or two on each page. She gives the reader some beginning information about the make-up of stars, and moves on to talk about stars in relation to the earth, continuing with constellations and the history of their discovery. She then brings in the study of astronomy, giving an overview and talking about different kinds of telescopes and their purposes. She ends with some dates and facts about the universe, stars and astronomy. Although the information is straight forward, concise and clear and the scientific facts sound, she does cover a lot of information for a beginning book. It may have been better to divide the information into two books.

The illustrations lend themselves well to the text. They are brightly painted pictures, done mostly in primary colors, which help to further explain the concepts introduced through the text. She varies the picture format, sometimes using a border to divide two pictures on one page and other times using one illustration per page or a double spread. The text is a good size for elementary kids in their early years of reading. It's big enough to not frustrate kids or keep them from choosing the book, but is not too large so that they would feel the book too young or babyish.

Although it's a book about the universe and Astronomy, there are a number of people in the book and Gibbons includes an equal representation of males and females as well as a variety of people from different ethic backgrounds and age groups. Overall, in Gibbons' tradition, she gives beginning readers a concise, attractive information rich book in an easy to digest format.