View source for The Book Of Space: All About Stars, Planets and Rockets! by Clive Gifford

{{infobox2
|title=The Book Of Space: All About Stars, Planets and Rockets!
|sort=Book Of Space: All About Stars, Planets and Rockets!, The
|author=Clive Gifford
|reviewer=John Lloyd
|genre=Children's Non-Fiction
|rating=4.5
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|isbn=9781780551395
|pages=128
|publisher=Buster Books
|date=October 2013
|aznuk=1780551398
|aznus=1780551398
|cover=1780551398
|website=
|video=
|summary=A sober look at space science in intelligent one- or two-page chunks, that teaches you a lot more in its black and white clarity than other books of its ilk.
}}

There's always a danger in putting a definitive article in the name of a children's non-fiction book title.  Luckily enough this volume does go almost as far as making itself definitive, with a lot of numbers and facts, yet a delivery that makes all of those and the theories and terminology it uses all palatable to the browser, and still manages to throw in the redundant unfunny cartoons at the side.  In using an intelligent system of going through all the subjects under the broad subject of space, with none of the tables, box-outs and so on other editors choose, this proves one of the more sober, measured and successful books of its kind.

Everything indeed certainly seems to be here, from the loss of a scientist's nose to a sombrero galaxy, from ejecta in space running about as close to light speed as we can expect of any matter, to the measly few kilometres the Mars Opportunity robot covered in the several years its 90-day mission finally ran for.  And with the author's intelligent design it's an easy thing to accept the paragraphs about space station toilets et al when you've had such a comprehensive, brick-by-brick examination of all that cosmologists are interested in.

I think if anything will grasp the young scientist it is a book such as this.  Yes, it reads a lot more maturely than several other similar volumes, but that's all for the good.  The young reader needs something to fall between the catchy, factoid-filled colour of the space primers and the Wikipedia pages her teachers tell her not to rely on.  There's nothing here to patronise, yet with many cross-references and a decent index nothing to scare or confound anyone.  I don't wish to make it seem this is just a chunk of script that is purely for the class swot – nearly every page has at least a few sub-headings to break the text up, if not a sensible illustration or those needless cartoons.  Practically everything is covered in just a two-page spread at worse, and accessibility is just as much of concern as currency, intelligence and accuracy.

It's definitely a volume for the older ages of primary schoolchild, and is definitely more to my old-fashioned tastes.  (I come from an age when all this would have been in miles, not in French, and the USSR and record players would not need explaining.)  It's also definitely worth a recommendation.

I must thank the publishers for my review copy.

[[Space in 30 Seconds by Clive Gifford and Dr Mike Goldsmith]] is the same author's very own catchy, factoid-filled colourful space primer whose audience will mature into the title under review above.

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