Eyewitness: Time and Space by: Mary and John Gribbin

Genre: Non-Fiction

Publisher: DK Children

Copyright Date: 2000

Number of pages: 64

Reading Level: 9-12

Summary:

This book is packed full of information including stuff about ancient ideas, measuring time, the universe, black holes, space and time.... There is so much information that to summarize every little thing would be impossible so I will just talk about a few things I learned. For one thing, the idea of space only became important when farmers were trying to figure out whose land was whose. This led to research and discoveries about the Earth and space. I also learned that if you were to take a road trip around the circumference of the earth traveling at a steady pace of 37 miles (60km) per hour, you would finish your trip in just inder a month. But taking a jet plane at 500 miles per hour, it would take 21 years to travel the distance from the earth to the sun. WOW! Another interesting fact is, scientific evidence shows that there was a beginning to the universe. which would imply that there is an edge of time! That is a little much to think about. One last thing that I learned is that, when it comes to the universe, light provides the ultimate measure in length.

This book contains, along with its actual text, pictures and picture caps that give the reader even more information. It has labels for every picture so that there is hardly white space on a page to spare.

Who would benefit from reading this book/ who would I recommend this book to?

A very inquisitive and imaginitive child would like this book. I would recommend this book to a child that is always asking how something works and why. There is so much information in this book that it could keep a kid occupied for a long time.

What problems/conflicts could this book potentially cause?

There are a lot of things that a student can learn from this book, but it also has a lot of words in it that could be potentially confusing and frustrating to a child. As I was reading it, there were a lot of words that I wasn't even familiar with. As I have said before the pages are completely covered with information and pictures. A student could have a hard time focusing while reading this book. I would be careful not to give this book to a child who is easily frustrated when they don't understand something.

My Reaction:

I thought there were a lot of amazing facts in this book that I had no clue about, ten times the amount that I discussed in my summary. If I had time, I would enjoy going through this book and reading each and every bit of text there is but that is hard to do. When I opened this book, I could feel my heartbeat quicken becuase there was so much on the page that it wasn't pleasing to my eyes. It makes me feel tired and anxious for some reason. I have read other books with a lot of information in them but for some reason this one didn't keep my interest as much as the others. Perhaps its because I felt like I didn't know enough information before I started reading. But as I said before, this book would benefit kids who like to learn about anything and everything. I think they would go crazy over the information inside.