Agnostic Mom

When we stopped going to church, libraries and bookstores became a favorite destination for our family. We go a lot, and I love that my children consider a visit to a repository of books a desirable adventure.

This time an appearance from Strawberry Shortcake called us to a locally owned bookstore we’d never frequented. A good 30 minutes from home, Changing Hands Bookstore turned out to be the place of my dreams. With more of an eclectic style than the pristine Barnes & Noble, yet comparable in size, there was much to entertain my curious eye.

We moved to the back in search of “Strawberry Short,” as Aiden insists on calling her. We sat the kids down with the other children, then backed away to get behind the young audience.

I scanned the nearby shelves for a book to peruse while the kids listened to magical tales of fruit-filled characters. Staying in view of my children, I passed only a couple shelves and found myself facing an entire row of books by the great Joseph Campbell! I once tried unsuccessfully to find books by him at a library. And now here I was, at the Changing Hands bookstore, staring at an entire row of stumbled-upon Joseph Campbell books.

During a brief break in which “Strawberry Short” needed a sip of strawberry juice, I took my kids over to the amazing children’s section. At Barnes & Noble, I have to sift through a lot of books; books with the purpose of introducing commercial toys to children, rather than actually produce an engaging tale or impart knowledge in an attractive way (although we did find that amazing pop-up dinosaur book called Encyclopedia Prehistorica Dinosaurs at Barnes & Noble).

At this particular store, my walk toward the children’s area revealed a plethora of desirable books. The one that really got me excited, though, was another educational, beautifully illustrated pop-up book. Galileo’s Universe, by J. Patrick Lewis and Tom Curry, begins with an introduction of how the world had embraced Aristotle and Ptolemy’s geocentric (earth-centered) cosmos for centuries.

Aristotle and Galileo shared a common wonder with everyday observations, but differed, both in their responses to their curiosities, as well as in their results.

Falling grapes. Floating Leaves. Flying Cannonballs. Swinging lamps. Aristotle had seen these things, too, but his explanation of their “essence,” or nature, did not satisfy Galileo.

And so the man of Pisa probed, measured, and tested . . . . Where Aristotle had asked why things moved, Galileo asked how.

Galileo’s Universe will reach a wide-range of ages. All children love pop-up books. Aiden, who is two, loves the book only for the experience of observation as he swings the pendulum back and forth or opens various windows.

Five-year-old Trinity loves the book for the same reason, but with her I am able to introduce the man, Galileo, with a brief explanation of the mathematical or scientific discovery of the particular pop-up she is manipulating. When she turns the dial to see various heavenly bodies on Galileo’s makeshift telescope, or opens up the fold-out comparison between Aristotle and Galileo’s model of the universe, I can explain how science altered what we know about our place in it.

Blake, who is eight-years-old, can actually read and understand the book himself. Besides the beautiful art, which I always look for in children’s books, the author used two different writing techniques to convey the information about Galileo and his life.

The body of text is in poetic form. It first illuminates the fascinations that preoccupied the mind of Galileo, the child:

The movement of a boat or toy,
The angle of a shaft of light
Provided endless hours of joy
And kept him dreaming half the night.

If everything preoccupied
His mind, then what would he become-
A child captivated by
The swinging of a pendulum?

Next we learn how Galileo chose his field of study, invented the hydrostatic scale for measuring weights and metals, and then stood upon the Leaning Tower of Pisa to test the common, ancient assumption that balls of different weight would fall at different rates of speed. There is a great pop-up to illustrate the simultaneous landings of a ball of wood and a ball of lead.

Blake couldn’t believe the actual results explained in the book. He tested it with a number of objects and laughed in amazement to see it in person.

At the end of the book, we observe The Church’s reaction to Galileo’s heliocentric universe and how they banned him to house arrest for the remainder of his life:

When Galileo’s sixty-nine years
Were folded in his chair,
He faced the angry Holy Men,
Who thundered on, “Beware!
The Earth is fixed, it does not move-
So you must testify!”
They sentenced him to silence
And they took away his sky.

There is a second mode of story-telling, which further adds to the book’s versatility. Many of the pages have a pull out insert which give, in prose form, more details to Galileo’s life, studies, and inventions. At the end of the book is a time line for his life.

Am I happy with my purchase of Galileo’s Universe?

You know you got a good book when the kids spend the entire ride home fighting over who gets to hold it. You know it’s good when your son wants to conduct his own experiment based on the story. It’s definitely a prized possession, as I can barely keep my hands around it long enough to write up its review. Yes, I am thrilled with my purchase.