STAR SEEKER

Handsome illustrations almost rescue this incoherent tour of the night sky. Heine opens with a set of not-always-felicitous verses—“I’ll spin like a pinwheel / Through the Milky Way’s froth, / Take a ride on the Great Bear / And never fall off”—that bounce the narrator at random from Orion to Earth, then closes with two spreads on the stars and planets that offer such confusing tidbits as: “The methane in [Uranus’s] atmosphere absorbs red light, giving it its green-blue color.” Using a rich palette and flowing lines over starry, airbrushed backgrounds, Tavares places two delighted young explorers in brightly patterned garb soaring atop a celestial bear, flinging a planet like a Frisbee, waving wands or streamers and sailing over elegantly undulant landscapes. The result is a visual treat—but budding stargazers will get a clearer idea of what they’re actually looking at from the likes of Mike Goldsmith’s Solar System (2002) and Jane Ann Peddicord’s Night Wonders (2005). (Picture book/nonfiction. 7-9)