This most compelling aspect of this text are its beautiful photographs of outer space. It's difficult to find a quality text with images of other planets' moons, such as Triton, and this book delivers. My students loved the dramatic colors of the images. The text about each planet is accurate and relatively concise; difficult scientific language is kept to a minimum. At the same time, Croswell does not "talk down" to young learners. This book gave me a considerable amount of background knowledge necessary to teach a unit on the Solar System to first grade. I read chunks of the text to my first grade students; it was very dense and wordy at times, so I found myself paraphrasing. The data tables and facts in the back would be more interesting and helpful to older learners. I was disappointed about the absence of a glossary and source page, which is why this text did not receive 5 stars. Overall, this is a good book, and I would use it again. ( )

This is a great book that gives you enormous amount of information about all of the planets, including the 10th planet. It also has information on other outer space phenomenon; from Comets to the first asteroids discovered.

As a student this is my favorite outer space book that i have read. The information is much different from the other books. It gives you fun information and interesting facts.

As a teacher i think my students would love this book. i could use this book as an introduction to a study of the solar system. ( )

Citation: Coswell, Ken. Ten Worlds: Everything that Orbits the Sun. Boyds Mills Press, 2006

Annotation:
This is a non-fiction book about the solar system. The book discusses each planet that is part of the solar system and how the solar system was formed.

Age/grade:
I would recommend this book for students in fourth- six grade because there is a lot of factual information that would be hard for a non-fluent reader to understand. This book is appropriate for students in these grades because there is a lot of text in the book that would be hard for a beginning reader to be able to follow and understand. The story is also factual in the information it provides about the solar system, provides text and pictures to help students visualize and understand what part of the solar system they are reading about. There were also a few charts included toward the end of this book. One of these charts provided information about each planets distance from the sun, their rotation period, and axial tilt; while another provided information about the seven moons with the name of the moon, its planet, and the distance from that planet. These charts would be great for students in these grades to find quick facts about the different planets in the solar system.

Description of how to use book:
I would use this book as part of a science extension about the solar system. I would use this book to help students learn more about the solar system. I would then have students pick a planet they would like to learn more about and do a report about that planet. The student would also be required to make a visual, like a picture, diorama, or chart to go along with their report.

Description of artwork:
The artwork though out this book consisted of detailed pictures of the planets that make up the solar system. These pictures looked as though they were taken from a satellite because they were so close and showed a lot of details. I found the page layouts in this book to be very helpful and appropriate for students in these grades. The double page layouts offered students a text box on the left page with a picture of the planet on the right page with a text box underneath the planet if necessary. All the information about the planet was kept to its two pages so students didn’t have to turn the page to find pictures, all the information they need on the particular planet being discussed was right in front of them. The author also made the pages in the book black and inserted a text box containing all the information about the planet. This format was not overwhelming to look at; I think students will find the colors and layout of this book visually appealing.

http://talesofarampaginglibrarian.blogspot.com/2006/10/plutos-dog-not-planet-or-... ( )