Our Place in the Universe – Near and Very, Very Far Away
Review by Dr. Jerry Flack
One of the most notable characteristics of intellectually gifted children is their seemingly unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Your Place in the Universe is a perfect fit for such keen learners. Jason Chin’s remarkable STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) picture book is about measurements, comparisons, relationships, numbers, time, distance, and the incredible vastness of the known universe. Chin’s STEM inquiry opens with bright watercolor illustrations portraying four eight-year-old children of different races, yet of average height (50 inches), who are busy setting up a telescope. One of the girls is carrying a copy of this wonderful book. The children are approximately five times as tall as the book, but they are only half as tall as an ostrich, the tallest of birds in the world. Ostriches are scarcely half the height of giraffes, the tallest land animals on Earth. Giraffes are not the tallest living things on the planet. That honor goes to California redwood trees that are 20 times greater in height than the tallest known giraffe (19 feet). The tallest redwood tree is 380 feet high. Human-built structures include the Burj Khalifa skyscraper construction in Dubai which soars to a height of 2,717 feet. The Jeddah Tower, currently under construction in Saudi Arabia, has a planned height of 3,281 feet. These soaring buildings dwarf even the tallest and most majestic California redwood trees.
In turn, human structures are no match for the height of great mountain peaks on the planet. Is Mount Everest (29,035 feet) the Earth’s highest mountain peak? Yes, but only if measured from sea level. From its undersea base to its towering peak, Mauna Kea in Hawaii is 3,661 feet above the total height of Mount Everest.
As mighty as these massive mountains are, their immensity is diminished when compared to Earth’s atmosphere. Its height is so extraordinary that Chin uses a vertical two-page spread to illustrate the fantastic distance among the five atmospheric layers. The apex of the known Earth atmosphere ranges upwards to 6,200 miles above sea level in the exosphere. The International Space Station orbits the Earth 248 miles above its base. That is 45 times the height of Mount Everest.
Even these great distances of space in Earth’s atmosphere are not as astounding as the dimensions of Earth itself. Earth is 7,926 miles wide, 128 times the distance from sea level to the edge of space. The current edge of space in the Earth’s atmosphere is believed to be 62 miles above sea level.
From the earliest pages, Chin defines and uses the Imperial or U.S. measurements for distances (inches, feet, miles) as well as their metric equivalents (centimeters, meters, kilometers). He also defines light years and notes that it is a measurement of distance and not time. Light travels 186,000 miles per second. Nothing can travel faster than light.
Chin’s profile of the planet Earth is only a beginning reference point for the remainder of the incredible journey he offers readers as they travel through time and space. Children soon learn the distance from Earth to the Moon is 238,855 miles. Next up are the planets that share the same sun as Earth. Readers further explore the Milky Way and, in order, the Andromeda galaxy, galaxy clusters, the cosmic web, and ultimately the universe as astronomers today know it to be.
Significant back matter demonstrates the author-illustrator's extraordinary research. It is an example of laudable scholarship for gifted children to emulate. Chin pays tribute to Dr. Margaret Geller and Dr. Scott Kenyon of the Harvard Center for Astrophysics who provided invaluable technical advice. He notes the great value of astronomy tools such as the Hubble Space Telescope. In describing the grandness of distances on the planet Earth, the author compares the highest mountain peak of Mount Everest (29,035 feet) to the greatest depth of the oceans, the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific, that is 36,000 feet below sea level. He also uses humor to explain why Earth is referred to by astronomers as the “Goldilocks” planet. Earth is just right in its relationship to the Sun. It is not too close or too far. It is not too hot or too cold. It is perfect to sustain life. Another delight is the cosmic address he uses to address a post card to be sent to an inhabitant of Earth from a space alien. Following the recipient’s name, housing number, street address, city, state or province, postal (e.g, Zip Code) and nation, the remaining address would be:
Earth
The Solar System
The Milky Way
The Local Groups
The Local Supercluster
The Universe.
Important back matter further illuminates content only briefly cited in the narrative. One example. Earth’s atmosphere and its five layers begin with the troposphere that extends just 7 miles above sea level. Further layers include the stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere. The exosphere is so far distant that if the Earth is imagined as a basketball, the troposphere would be as thin as a postcard in comparison.
Chin explains how his illustrations are drawn to scale, but also notes that the Universe is so immense that any attempt to portray it beyond the asteroid belt would not allow for planets and comets to even be visible in an artistic representation. The beautiful watercolor illustrations compliment the complex text. Each of the astronomy facts presented in the main narrative is illustrated digitally for scientific accuracy. Perceptive author and illustrator notes plus books and websites are also shared. Gifted readers can easily comprehend the depth and breadth of the text. This is an outstanding book for readers of all ages who have a passion for learning. While the book targets children in the upper elementary grades, the verbal and artistic content will even captivate adults. No reader can possibly embrace this STEM volume without begging for even greater knowledge.
Home Activities
Your Place in the Universe is the winner of the 2021 Cook Prize from the Bank Street Center for Children's Literature. Thousands of school children voted this amazing book the best STEM picture book published in the year 2020. The Cook Prize is the only national (USA) book award chosen by children. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, no formal ceremony for the bestowing of the Cook Prize was held in 2021. But, the substitute is even better than a banquet speech by the author-illustrator. YouTube presents a 15-minute plus close-up interview with the author/illustrator filmed in his home studio in which he speaks about the great scope of his research and how he illustrated the book. Chin even takes viewers to his backyard and beyond in order to provide comparative examples of the immense distances even within our own solar system. Encourage children to watch this informative video in which Jason Chin provides a mini-astronomy lesson.
Jason Chin notes that the telescope is the most important tool of astronomers. Ask children to use books and online research to discover the history, invention, and developments of telescopes. Encourage children and young adults to create a visual timeline of the evolution of the telescope. When was the first known telescope invented? What are the most recent developments in telescopes? Hypothesize what future telescopes may be able to reveal to astronomers.
Use print and online resources to discover how to build a telescope. A friend of this reviewer built his first telescope in the summer prior to his eighth-grade school year. Gary paid for its components by mowing lawns and delivering newspapers. His mentors were his junior high school science teacher and optical scientist and inventor, John Gregory. Gary joined the adult astronomy club, the Stamford (Connecticut) Astronomical Society, while still in junior high school. He built his second and more powerful telescope at the age of 15 years. Early in his youth, Gary was introduced to Sky and Telescope magazine and remains a lifetime subscriber. His personal telescope has traveled with him across the nation matching his career trajectory. Each of his three adult children and their families own and avidly use their own telescopes, but “Papa Gary” shares his passion for astronomy with his grandchildren using the original telescope that he built at the dawn of the space age. Gary is a prime example of how gifted children can extend their youthful passions into lifetime pursuits of knowledge.
One of the most beautiful sightings in the thermosphere, beyond the edge of space, are the auroras commonly called the northern and southern lights. Perhaps the most famous of the auroras is the Aurora Borealis. The latter name was first used in 1619 by the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei. Cave paintings in France that date back 30,000 years record the “Northern Lights.” Myriad online videos reveal images of this incredible scientific phenomenon. After viewing print and virtual images of the Aurora Borealis, encourage gifted children to paint their own illustration of this astronomical marvel. Challenge children further. If the northern lights are referred to as the Aurora Borealis, what are the southern lights called?
A scenario is not a work of science fiction. People who wish to imagine what distant futures may hold for the Earth and the universe propose extrapolations of possible futures based upon contemporary or known facts. Scenarios of schools of the future build upon current knowledge to imagine and describe and illustrate predictions of what typical classrooms may look like in the year 2050. Your Place in the Universe concludes with the words and images known to exist in the year 2020. Challenge gifted writers and artists to conceptualize what knowledge astronomers might be able to communicate in the year 2060. Similar scenarios might conceive of space travel within the same time frame.
