THE UPS AND DOWNS OF GRAVITY

How gravity works on things from apples to planets.

After an incorrect claim that Newton was “the first to describe gravity” (actually a topic of scholarly discussion since ancient times), Adler goes on to explain that mass is not the same as weight and to lay out the effects of distance between two attracting bodies. Expanding into the solar system he presents supposed weights for a 100-pound reader on Jupiter and the sun (omitting the fact that neither body has a surface that said reader could stand on). A confusingly incomplete introduction to orbital mechanics includes the notion of inertia—but never connects the Newtonian dots to explain why planets don’t move in straight lines. “There’s a lot more to gravity,” he vaguely remarks after all this, finishing in the same simplistic vein as he began by defining it as the force “that keeps everything in its place.” In Raff’s sparsely detailed pictures a mouse in a stereotypically schoolmarmish frock conducts two human children, one pale and the other brown-skinned, through various earthly and extraterrestrial scenes, pausing occasionally to let the children demonstrate physical principles or effects with balls, sheets of paper, and like common materials. Along with a richer (and funnier) visual experience, readers who fall into Jason Chin’s Gravity (2014) will ultimately touch down with a clearer understanding of how the phenomenon keeps people and planets in their courses. (This book was reviewed digitally with 11-by-18-inch double-page spreads viewed at 77% of actual size.)

Lands with a dull thud despite being light on factual mass.