A collection of original, outer space-themed poetry for children accompanied by striking photos. The book demonstrates a variety of common poetic forms and defines poetic devices. Large, clear photos of space accompany verse that describes celestial bodies, space travel, the Mars rover, and more, in simple, concise language. Concludes with two glossaries - one for space terms and one for poetry - and a bibliography. Salas' Seed Sower, Hat Thrower: Poems About Weather (2008) is an excellent companion title. --"Book Links, "Exploring Science and Poetry" " Salas offers a limerick, a cinquain, an acrostic, and 12 other short rhymed or free verse poems on themes astronomical. Accompanied by full-page or -spread photos reproduced with varying clarity, the poems treat such topics as Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a space shuttle takeoff, the Mars Rover, and the Pleiades. Taking a descriptive rather than a ruminative approach, the poet keeps her language simple enough for fledgling readers to tackle: "Saturn's/giant/Saturn's/gas/No solid/ground for/trees or grass/Saturn's/banded/Saturn/swings/A skirt of/circling/rocky rings." Closing with twin glossaries of space words and of poetic forms, plus a perfunctory, two-item "Read More" list, this versatile book will be useful for both science and language-arts units. --"School Library Journal" ...fresh and lively. Salas is devoted to her craft, and presents poems in different forms, and then explains each in the backmatter. This book would work well for a unit on poetry as it does for a unit on space. --"Growing with Science blog" Laura Purdie Salas is the author of more than 100 books for kids and teens. Her work has received the Minnesota Book Award and other honors, including Bank Street Best Books of the Year, and NCTE Notables. She and her husband live in Minnesota and have two monsters of their own, Maddie and Annabelle. When Laura's not reading or writing, she likes to dance, play games, and work with the Minnesota Brass drum corps (which involves a lot of Counting, following Patterns, and creating Shapes on the field). She tries to eat More vegetables and Less brownies, but that is hard! Learn more about Laura at laursalas.com.