Camp Creek Press

As soon as Christmas is over, I'm ready for spring.

Since the solstice, just a few days before Christmas, marks the official first day of winter, well, I usually don't get my way.

This week, however, we are having completely unseasonably warm weather. We don't need to put on a coat to go outside and fill the bird feeders. The bottom land has all flooded, leaving us with a lovely, sparkly view of water from every window. And we had a wonderful, long nighttime session of star viewing.

A couple of great star-gazing books are H.A. Rey's The Stars: A New Way to See Them (for older children and adults) and Find the Constellations (for younger children).

H.A. Rey is also, of course, the writer and illustrator (with his wife Margaret) of the Curious George books. I love his illustration style in these books about the stars.

Here's an interesting tidbit from his Wikipedia page:

Whether they are aware of it or not, millions of amateur astronomers see the constellations through Rey's eyes. Before the 1952 publication of Rey's The Stars: A New Way to See Them (ISBN 0-395-24830-2), star charts used a conventional set of diagrams that seemed arbitrary, were hard to remember, and relied on dim stars that, regrettably, are hard to see today in populated areas. Rey invented a new set of constellation diagrams that corresponded to what could be seen from a suburban backyard on an ordinary night. He was successful in finding shapes that could really be seen as cartoonish depictions of the creature or character the constellations was supposed to represent—or, at least, were memorable. His constellation diagrams were widely adopted and now appear in many astronomy guides, such as Menzel's A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets. As of 2003 The Stars: A New Way to See Them, and a simplified presentation for children called Find the Constellations, are still in print.