Space: 2a Three-Dimensional Journey

With the reader at a spacecraft's controls, this thrilling book takes a bold journey into the wild blue yonder. After blasting off from Mercury's cra- tered surface the traveler can visit six planets and an asteroid by merely turning the pages. The expansive yet graphically sparse paintings allow observation of the celestial bodies from a variety of perspectives. The space adventure is heightened by four intricate pop-ups, one, for example, showing Jupiter's spouting, effulgent volcanoes. Throughout, Clifton-Day's use of color shifts nicely from cool, inky black to smoldering reds and oranges, visually creating striking climatic changes. Each otherwise wordless spread also contains a page flap extension that resembles a cockpit control panel and provides scientific data and statistics--diameter of the planet, topographical features, average distance from the sun. This simulated voyage makes for exciting learning about our final frontier. Ages 5-9. (May)