Climb aboard the earth for the adventure of a lifetime! As you travel, watch shadows move from here to there as day stretches into night, and feel the weather change as one season rolls into the next. All these amazing things happen because the earth is constantly in motion. Spinning and circling, gliding and tilting, as passengers of the earth, our voyage never ends!
With poetic text and gorgeous illustrations, G. Brian Karas illuminates our earth and its cycles and does a brilliant job of making the concepts of rotation and revolution understandable to even the youngest readers.
On Earth FROM THE PUBLISHER Climb aboard the earth for the adventure of a lifetime! As you travel, watchshadows move from here to there as day stretches into night, and feel the weather change as one season rolls into the next. All these amazing things happen because the earth is constantly in motion. Spinning and circling, gliding and tilting, as passengers of the earth, our voyage never ends!
With poetic text and gorgeous illustrations, G. Brian Karas illuminates our earth and its cycles and does a brilliant job of making the concepts of rotation and revolution understandable to even the youngest readers.
FROM THE CRITICS Publishers Weekly G. Brian Karas, who narrated Atlantic from the ocean's perspective, now explores an even vaster topic in the idealistic profile On Earth. Spaceship Earth, pictured in limpid blues and greens, takes readers on "a giant ride in space,/ spinning like a merry-go-round." Pictures of children in rural fields alternate with abstract depictions of the planet rotating and orbiting around the sun, as the text explains that "by the time we get back to where we started, we're one year older." Karas distills profound concepts into pared-down sentences and impressionistic mixed-media illustrations. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Children's Literature - Phyllis Kennemer, Ph.D.
Written in succinct, poetic language this introduction to the movement of the earth around the sun and its rotation on its axis will capture children's imaginations. The earth is compared to a ride on a giant merry-go-round spinning in space. Light turns to dark. Days become months and then years. The passage of a year's time is effectively shown in a twelve-panel illustration. A young boy with a tree planted next to him grows a bit with each panel and changes clothes according to the seasons. The tree also grows as it gains and loses leaves throughout the year. The counting of years with calendars and candles is illustrated with a young boy admiring a birthday cake with eight candles. Unopened presents wait in the background. Colorful, childlike illustrations— accompanied by diagrams and charts—help readers to envision the complicated concepts presented. The final spread effectively provides a sense of the vastness of the solar system, closing with: "We fly through space/as night becomes day,/summer becomes winter,/and years go by." Parents and teachers will enjoy using this book to introduce and discuss our earth and solar system to young children. 2005, G. P. Putnam's Sons, Ages 5 to 9. School Library Journal PreS-Gr 2-A simple poetic text describes the Earth's daily and yearly cycles: "At night we turn away from the sun and see a universe of stars and planets while we dream of what we can do tomorrow." The paintings are as simple as the narrative; some show night and day with very large children on small planets (one is sleeping in darkness, the other is fishing in sunlight). Others show the passage of seasons as children go to school, celebrate birthdays, and stand by little trees in their various stages of growth. A few of the pictures go sideways in a manner that demonstrates some concepts very well; for example, gravity is concretely illustrated by figures standing on ground that runs perpendicular to the bottom of the page. Karas's distinctive cartoon figures will be familiar to anyone who knows his work, and his colors are gorgeous, even down to the endpapers (the front endpaper is sky blue and the back one is midnight blue). While this book does not present the information in a step-by-step fashion like Franklyn Branley's Sunshine Makes the Seasons (HarperCollins, 2005), it is just as outstanding in its own way, which is both more sophisticated and more childlike.-Lauralyn Persson, Wilmette Public Library, IL Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews Really quite glorious in his simplicity, Karas in word and picture effortlessly imparts understanding of time, calendars, seasons and growth in the rotation and revolution of planet earth. Arrows show the earth spinning on its axis and the way it "circles the sun in a great sweep." Children face the sun and watch the shadows show the length of a day. Then on a wonderful orb, a child in bed faces the stars on the periwinkle night half, and another one, fishing on a riverbank, faces a blue, rainbowed sky on the blue-green-and-gold half that is day. The planet spinning and orbiting around the sun follows the months, "so by the time we get back to where we started, we're one year older." The tilt of the earth's axis shows how we're warmer when our hemisphere tilts toward the sun. But with all this spinning and circling and rotating and revolving, we don't fall off because gravity holds us. The illustrations have texture and charm, but also whimsy and a light, supple touch, as they move in close to the children's faces or out to the whole solar system. Terrific. (glossary) (Picture book. 5-10)
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