This is great science for the very young. Meanwhile, their pitcher of lemonade, which had floated away, fortuitously lands in the hands of the boy at the beach.Ī two-page author’s note explains even more about gravity and related concepts such as mass and orbits. The young boy’s toys and snack end up falling into a yard where some young girls had been operating a lemonade stand.

Meanwhile, the young boy grabs hold of a boulder and stays put.Įventually, after some further textual and visual explanation of how gravity works, the force resumes its pull and everything drops back to Earth.

The letters in those words accompany a young boy’s toy astronaut and toy spaceship, his banana, sand bucket, and scores of other miscellaneous objects that have previously been sitting on a beach but are now floating away from Earth. But when gravity ceases functioning, the words making up the text of Jason Chin’s GRAVITY float away, making them part of the fun, high-flying visual tale about the fundamentals of this physical force. The Moon would drift away from the Earth. Without gravity, everything would float away. Why must it come down? Why, gravity, of course! For parents and educators looking to teach younger children about this subject, I would recommend combining these two books, as the Chin title offers an imaginative introduction, and the Branley a more scientific approach. There is an informative afterword that provides more details, but overall I would say that this was a title suitable for much younger children, who might upon occasion ask something like: 'why does everything fall down, instead of floating away?' Gravity itself is not something we completely understand yet, a reality that Franklyn Mansfield Branley highlighted in his own picture-book about the subject, Gravity Is a Mystery. With no more than a word or two per page, Gravity is not a text-heavy book, and focuses more on emphasizing the central importance of gravity, rather than exploring what it is. The accompanying artwork is immensely engaging, vividly capturing the beauty of the cosmos, and the magic of flying objects liberated (in theory) from gravity. In simple text, he sets out the importance of gravity, not just in keeping objects (and atmosphere!) tethered to our world, but in keeping our world revolving around the sun, and our moon orbiting us. Author/artist Jason Chin, whose many wonderful works of picture-book natural history include Redwoods, Coral Reefs and the recent Grand Canyon, explores the scientific concept of gravity here.

Gravity by Jason Chin