Module 4 Science Poetry: Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars: Space Poems and Paintings

Florian, Douglas. 2007. Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars: Space Poems and Paintings. Ill. Douglas Florian. Orlando: Harcourt, Inc. ISBN-10: 9780152053727 ISBN-13:978-0152053727

Comets, Stars, the Moon, and Mars is another great example of Douglas Florian’s love of science told through poems. The poems are fun, the information educational and accurate, and the pictures are amazing. Space is a mystery and children will love the poems, while exploring the universe.

Science is a subject that is sometimes overlooked. Douglas Florian’s books on science are wonderful ways to include science with language arts. The poetry in his books are fun to read with rhyming words that sometimes makes you want to sing his poems. It is obvious that he does the research and includes correct terminology. Pluto for example was changed from a planet to a dwarf planet and Florian truly captured this change in his poem, which when read, has a rap beat to it. Florian is also the artist and his unique way of adding words, hidden pictures, cutouts and color combinations to the pictures encourage children to want to look and read over and over again. This is a great way of learning facts and having fun reading with poetry. At the end he includes a Galactic Glossary of information on each aspect of space in this book and selected bibliography and further readings. He also includes an excellent website for NASA. I loved this book and wanted to include all the poems but I guess you will just have to read the book, which I feel you will do, more than once. Enjoy!

This book was also a bluebonnet nominee in 2008-09

Jupiter

Jupiter’s jumbo,
Gigantic,
Immense.
So wide
Side to side,
Bus gaseous, not dense.
With some sixteen moons
It’s plainly prolific---
So super-dupiter
Jupiterrific!
(Excerpt from: Comet, Stars, the Moon, and Mars: Space Poems and Paintings, pg. 28-29)

This book will be a great addition to a unit on the Solar System. How fun it will be to have the children write an acrostic poem using the planet names, the moon, the universe, black holes, comets, star, meteors, or galaxies. Creating a Solar System in the hall for all the school to see, the poems will be displayed to show how science and language arts can be