Stars & planets Book

A recent dinnertime ritual (which doesn't involve who has eaten their brussels sprouts and who has more bacon) involves the asking of Hard Questions. These are not only educational for the kid but lead to arguments between us (are chickens so bad at flying because they've been bred to be fatter and good egg-layers, or would they be ground-dwelling birds anyway?) Other questions lead to an insight into the mind of a six-year-old:

Where does milk come from?
Cows.
What else? (Hoping to get to 'mammals')
Cowboys.
...
Why are you laughing, Mum?

Finally my point: Turns out the kid is also interested in astronomy (who isn't)? She's not yet at the age where I can hand her a non-fiction picture book about the subject -- and who knows, maybe she'll be more interested in an app. The app form is perfectly suited to this subject matter, where animations can make difficult subjects crystal clear (eg the way the earth revolves around the sun).

There is always a place for lingering over books, though, and I pulled this off the shelf to school myself up on some Hard Questions.

Published in 1996, some parts are already outdated:

MARS ROVER This vehicle has been built especially for exploring the surface of Mars. ... INTO THE FUTURE A spacemobile such as this may one day be used to carry scientists across the surface of Mars to collect specimens from canyons and ancient river beds. (Sure, but maybe we don't need to send the scientists after all... NASA recently celebrated 10 Years on Mars with the Mars Exploration Rover.)

Most of this book is still perfectly relevant for a lay person: None of the planets have been flung out of our solar system. I found the explanation of solar systems and galaxies well-written and clear, and a few things were cleared up for me.

Where the book feels the most dated, however (not that this is avoided in books published 2014) is the sexist language. There has been no attempt to show even one photo of a women, so young readers will conclude that astronomy is not a woman thing.

From the page STUDYING THE MILKY WAY:

Astronomer Bart Bok (below) and his scientist wife Priscilla Fairfield devoted their lives to unravelling the mysteries of the Milky Way. By careful observation, they mapped out the spiral arms of the galaxy. They also studied the great clouds that illuminate the sky in the constellations of Orion and Carina, and tried to piece together how new stars are born from these clouds.

While the reader does learn that this couple worked on their astronomy together, the wording suggests that while the man is the real astronomer, he was lucky enough to have a scientist for a wife (not a proper astronomer, mind) to help him. Better wording would have looked something like: Husband and wife team Bart Bok and Priscilla Fairfield devoted their lives to unravelling the mysteries of the Milky Way....

I am particularly pissed off when no care and attention has been paid to this in children's books. Children are still learning about the world and seeing possibilities for how they fit into it. For girl readers in particular, I'd recommend doing a search on the BBC Woman's Hour Podcast archives because a number of female astronomers have been talked about and interviewed over the years. (The one on Caroline Herschel is particularly good at showing how difficult it was for a woman to break in to the field -- Caroline managed because of her brother.) Lack of credit to the women working in and making contributions to the field is an historic problem.

Or maybe girls could just watch Gravity, and see how women scream in panic and curl up into foetal position when things go wrong into space.