Carolyn Cinami Decristofano

How many books about scientific concepts are funny and fun to read? Not too many, methinks. Carolyn Decristofano explains black holes via excellent analogies (a singularity is like a peanut with the mass of a trillion elephants!), thought experiments (imagine you approach the event horizon of a black hole and your foot stretches in front on you like a spaghetti noodle!), and great flow from one topic to the next (start with Newtonian gravity--that's pretty easy to get--and wait until the end to blow your mind with Einsteinian gravity!).

The illustrations are all also excellent, both in terms of elucidating concepts and capturing imaginations with the beauty of space.

I sincerely wish more non-fiction books were written with this much wit and verve, especially when it comes to books about math and science. In all honestly, I don't retain much of what I read about stuff like black holes, but with this book I had such a good time reading it, who cares?… (altro)

A great upper elementary book! I listened to this book as an audiobook and found it just as engaging as a science podcast. Written for kids the book is separated out into chapters each addressing a big question about space/black holes. The authors do a good job of helping kids understand the magnitude of space, giving metaphors for how to think about big concepts like gravity, and talking about where the earth and our galaxy fit in. They add in enough humor to keep engagement high too!

A great recommendation for any kid obsessed with space, or an in the car book to keep the learning going after school. I would be interested in seeing the visuals in the print version, I think there may be some excellent diagrams to help with some of the bigger topics.… (altro)