Abstract
To write a book in a conversational style for the instruction of children requires a deal of art and close familiarity with the curious workings of young minds. Books of this kind have usually to be classed as failures, and the present volume only rises in parts above their level. In the first place, few of the illustrations will interest children, and the figures of Mars on p. 69, and of the Orion Nebula on p. 157, are in no way satisfactory. Then the children's questions and answers are too ready and apt for an average child to follow or retain in his mind. Thus, on the four pages 20–23, Master Harry, who plays the part of the inquiring boy, has impressed upon him that it would take a train nearly one hundred and seventy-five years to get to the sun, that at the rate of two cents a mile the fare would be nearly two million dollars, that walking at the rate of four miles an hour for ten hours a day the journey would occupy more than six thousand years, that a cannon ball would take nine years to reach the sun, and the sound of the explosion fourteen years, and that if an imaginary long arm touched the sun, the pain of burning would not be felt for one hundred and fifty years on account of the time taken in the transmission of sensation through nerves.
Stories of Starland.
By Mary Proctor. Pp. 186. (New York: Potter and Putnam Co. London: G. W. Bacon and Co., Ltd.
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[Book Reviews]. Nature 58, 519 (1898). https://doi.org/10.1038/058519b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/058519b0