Our UniverseMy wife commented tonight that my son (4) was going on at length about which planet was where in the solar system and how if you lived right next to the sun it would be too hot to live, etc… and suggested we get him some books on the planets from the library. This got me to thinking about a book that I used to spend hours and hours reading, I probably read it through cover-to-cover over a hundred times over the years… and a few searches later I found the title and author, Roy A. Gallant, “Our Universe”… but it wasn’t until I found a picture of the book’s cover that I was sure it was the same one.

I probably spent most of my reading time in all my various ‘youth fiction’, like Piers Anthony’s Xanth series, but the runner up would be the World Book encyclopedia set my parents had bought… it was the place I learned all about the Maginot Line, for example… and various picture-filled books like this one and others on World War II aircraft, etc… so many things to look at and to fill your head with thoughts.

Of course, I’m a geek, so we’ll have Encarta around, but I just don’t think you can beat the enjoyment of a full-color oversized book to dig into a topic