The book folds out into one long, beautifully illustrated and double-sided picture of the solar system (not to scale, of course) – 8 illustrated pages on the front, 7 illustrated pages on the back. The picture features the sun, planets, a selection of significant spacecraft, comets, asteroids, and moons. The artwork is lovely and richly detailed, and the book can stand on its edge, so it can be left open and on display on a desk or bookshelf. The objects on the front have basic labels telling you what everything is but do not distract from the artwork. The back has a reduced version of the same artwork (as only 7 pages), and is annotated, packed with brief descriptions and interesting, fun snippets of information about all the objects and spacecraft shown, so kids can begin to find out about them and develop an interest in space. The back also includes explanations of terms such as ‘planet’ and ‘asteroids,’ etc. and a fact box for each planet with information such as size, distance from the sun, number of moons, etc. to give an idea of the scale involved.
