COMETS, STARS, THE MOON, AND MARS: SPACE POEMS AND PAINTINGS BY DOUGLAS FLORIAN

Bibliography
Florian, Douglas. 2007. COMETS, STARS, THE MOON, AND MARS: SPACE POEMS AND PAINTINGS BY DOUGLAS FLORIAN. Ill. Douglas Florian. Orlando, FL. Harcourt Books. ISBN 9720152053727

Plot Summary
COMETS, STARS, THE MOON AND MARS: SPACE POEMS AND PAINTINGS BY DOUGLAS FLORIAN is full of poems about outer space. Florian includes a poem for each planet, the sun, Earth’s moon, and several other objects that can be found in outer space; including, a galaxy, comets, constellations, and a black hole. The book begins with a “contents” section where the poems are listed in the order they appear in the book. “A Galactic Glossary” is included in the back of the book with definitions and explanations for each poem’s topic. Florian also includes a “selected bibliography and further reading” behind the glossary.

Critical Analysis
All of Florian’s poems are written in straight stanzas except for “a galaxy” which is written in the shape of a spiral and “the constellations” which is written in stanzas that move to the right like stairs. The poems are chock full of facts including, “Ninety-three million miles from Earth. / Nearly a million miles in girth. / 4.6 billion years old. / Core eight times as dense as gold.” from the poem, “the sun.” Most of the information in the poems is accurate, however not all. The book was written in 2007 and so some things have changed in our atmosphere since then. Most of the poems are written to rhyme and have much the same rhythm throughout the book. Florian includes humor into his poems to make them even more fun, “Mars has ice caps / Once had streams. / Mars has Martians… / In your dreams! There are many “labels” included in the pictures that are not explained or defined in the glossary. The text that seems to be rubber stamped onto the page is sometimes difficult to read but adds a neat effect to the pictures. The illustrations in this book were done with gouache, collage, and rubber stamps on primed brown paper bags. The poem titles are all written in Platelet font, while the text is written in Sabon. The pictures are an interesting hodge-podge of shapes and colors. Florian uses cut-outs on certain pages to let different colors show through. Florian does not show the planets to scale or in the correct order on “the solar system” page, which might be confusing to young children, however, he does put the poems about the planets in the correct order in the book. Overall, I thought the poems were fun and quick and the pictures interesting to look at.

Review Excerpts
Horn Book Fanfare Selection
Nick Jr. Family Magazine Best Book of the Year
Starred Review in School Library Journal: “In both language and artwork, Florian strikes the perfect balance between grandeur and whimsy.”
Review in The New York Times Book Review: “The poet-painter’s latest book brings warm wit to the outermost reaches of cold, dark space…”

Connections
*This book would be great to include in a unit about the planets or outer space.
*Students could find inaccuracies in the text or pictures.
*Students could write their own space poetry.