Solar System for Kids:
A Junior Scientist’s Guide to Planets, Dwarf Planets, and Everything Circling our Sun,
by Hilary Statum
Rockridge Press
5/26/2020
Juvenile Nonfiction/Astronomy
Age range: 6 to 8 years
Grade level: 3-4
106 pages
Goodreads 

Buy the book

Astronomy is evolving very quickly these days. There’s hardly a month without any new discovery. Maybe it’s time to brush up the basics, and I am sure Solar System for Kids will do the trick.

The introduction is very engaging, with simple narrative and questions to invite young scientists to learn through the pages of the book.

The six chapters are: Our Universe; Our Solar System; Terrestrial Planets and the Asteroid Belt; Gas Giants and Ice Giants; the Kuiper Belt and Dwarf Planets; Exploring Space.

The data is explained with easy to understand sentences and nice illustrations, pictures and drawings. Some sections with a darker background go in more details, for instance about dark energy. The young readers are sometimes invited to look at pictures found on the NASA page designed for kids, or to make their own illustrations.

In the sections about planets, each explanation is given with diameter, distance from the Sun, Distance from Earth, known moons, length of 1 day, length of 1 year, and the average temperature.

If you are not a specialist in astronomy, I bet you will learn almost as much as your children. Reading it with them could actually be a great activity.
Marketingly speaking, I think limiting the book to 6-8 year olds sounds wrong. Are all teens supposed to know all this? I doubt it. So really teens and adults can thoroughly enjoyed this book.
It would take too long to list here all I learned myself. I’ll just mention a dwarf planet I had absolutely never heard of: Makemake, discovered in March 2005. By the way, do you know the difference between a planet and a dwarf planet? You don’t? Well, time to get the book!

The last chapter is about observing the sky.
The book ends with a glossary containing easy definitions and a few more resources.

VERDICT: Wonderful book on the basics of astronomy. A great tool to refresh your knowledge and learn with your children.

In full compliance with FTC Guidelines, I received this book free of charge from the publisher through The Callisto Publisher’s Club. I was in no way compensated for this post as a reviewer, and the thoughts are my own.