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benedorm's review
4.0
It's not the only -- or even the primary -- criterion that I use when evaluating children's books, but I get a special thrill when I see a book and think "You know, I would really have enjoyed this book as a child." A Black Hole Is Not a Hole gave me that feeling, reminding me of the first time I picked up Our Universe or The Cartoon Guide to Physics, a pair of books that loom large in my memories of growing up.
Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano's book does an excellent job of taking a difficult concept and making it accessible for younger readers. Her prose is full of funny turns of phrase ("The plasma rolls and churns like a hyper hurricane of heat, light, sound, and motion."), and she has a way of making even difficult thought experiments easily comprehensible.
The only real issue that I had involves the order in which some of the information is presented. The book starts out using Newtonian physics, and only towards the end introduces relativistic principles. The part where relativity is introduced talks about the relationship between Newtonian and relativistic frameworks, but the initial explanation of Newtonian mechanics doesn't mention that relativity will be coming. The result is that a child reader learns one explanation for what happens in a black hole, only to learn later on in the book that there's another, better explanation. As someone with a lifelong interest, if no post-high school education, in physics, I'm all for teaching both Newtonian mechanics and relativity, but I think talking about one without telling the reader that the other is coming might confuse a child.
That's not a huge point, and I'd recommend it to any child with an interest in science or space.
Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano's book does an excellent job of taking a difficult concept and making it accessible for younger readers. Her prose is full of funny turns of phrase ("The plasma rolls and churns like a hyper hurricane of heat, light, sound, and motion."), and she has a way of making even difficult thought experiments easily comprehensible.
The only real issue that I had involves the order in which some of the information is presented. The book starts out using Newtonian physics, and only towards the end introduces relativistic principles. The part where relativity is introduced talks about the relationship between Newtonian and relativistic frameworks, but the initial explanation of Newtonian mechanics doesn't mention that relativity will be coming. The result is that a child reader learns one explanation for what happens in a black hole, only to learn later on in the book that there's another, better explanation. As someone with a lifelong interest, if no post-high school education, in physics, I'm all for teaching both Newtonian mechanics and relativity, but I think talking about one without telling the reader that the other is coming might confuse a child.
That's not a huge point, and I'd recommend it to any child with an interest in science or space.
imperfectcj's review
funny
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
3.75
If you're looking for an overview of black holes, this is a good place to look. I might have done better to read the physical book as there were a lot of numbers that we're difficult for me to visualize with the audio. Something I could visualize just fine but wish I couldn't: spaghettification. *shudder* Something cool: the center of the Milky Way appears to be a black hole in the constellation Sagittarius, my Zodiac sign. This book also does a good job of highlighting the way that our assumptions about reality shift as we learn more through science.
brucefarrar's review
3.0
Starting with their extreme gravitational pull and its startling effects on time, space and light, DeCristofano and Carroll present a chatty, colorful introduction to black holes for young readers. They go on to chronicle how these singularities were discovered first in theory and then by scientific observation. The book concludes with an illustrated glossary and notes on finding more information.
alys's review
4.0
I was surprisingly intrigued by this book about physics and black holes. The text flowed very smoothly, and the author managed to get across some very complex and complicated concepts concisely and without confusion. A child with very little background knowledge about space or black holes would be able to access all of the information here. I did feel like the book was occasionally trying a little too hard to be fun and exciting, when the material itself was interesting enough to carry the weight of interest without adding semi-sarcastic notes.
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