After our amazing trip to the Planetarium over the summer my son has become very interested in learning about our solar system and beyond.  He likes discovering facts about the different planets, how they move, what makes them similar and what makes them unique.  Unfortunately we do not have a good selection of books on the topic and our local library has not really been able to provide us with suitable material (either too basic or way tooo complex).  So I was excited when I saw that Button Books had a new book out called Discover Our Solar System.  I saw a few photos and I was very interested so I requested a review copy.

The book arrived and my son loved it.  It is set out in a really easy reading format yet it contains lots of interesting bits of information.  He really likes the two page spread for each planet.

And the What’s inside bit at the bottom of page was a massive hit with him.  At our talk at the planetarium they had mentioned the Rocky Midgets and the Gas Giants so we liked that he could now see a more detailed breakdown of how each planet is made up.

And yes we have paged through and compared planet after planet to see the different layers of each planet. (I must be admit I find this very useful as I can quickly check back to the diagrams when he is talking about the differences).

They also included lots of other interesting bits of information like the different moons – again my son really liked this as he is fascinated by the different moons and how many moons each planet has.  And the sections on how moons and rings etc got their names has been discussed in such detail in our house.

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And although we have mostly been reading and re-reading the sections about the different planets the book contains more.

The book starts with the Big Bang and some history about how the Solar System was discovered.  Then onto the Sun and the planets in our Solar System.  After Neptune it goes onto the Dwarf planets, Asteroids, The Space Race (I found this very useful), bits about Space Rockets and Space exploration today.

For our family this book has been a great addition to our limited space knowledge and we have found it very informative and interesting.  It definitely filled the gap that we needed – a book that was not too basic yet not too complicated for my eight year old (and his mom) to understand.

Disclosure : As I mentioned above this book was sent to me by the Publishers.  All opinions expressed are that of my son and myself.

You can buy this book from Amazon here – Discover our Solar System

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