Product Description
An atmospheric journey by Captain Goose explains the origins and effects of the weather in an unusual and entertaining way.
From the Author
Background information on The WeatherbirdsA few years ago, a friend told me she was having trouble finding an engaging children's book about the weather. When I looked into this for myself, I noticed that many of the books had a tendency to rely on the dramatic impact of weather photos and illustrations while being a bit hazy on what actually caused the amazing looking phenomena. I could sympathize with the trouble these writers must have had in trying to make the subject comprehensible. The physics of weather is difficult to explain without getting into a quagmire of physical principles. For instance, the formation of rainbows are only fully understood if one has an understanding of refraction, reflection, the visual spectrum of sunlight, parallax, and a skilled mind at thinking in three-dimensions.
At the time, I was interested in narrative science books, so I had a stab at doing one about the weather. Although I taught physics for five years, and gone on to illustrate non fiction books, I hadn't actually written children's non-fiction before. I was aware of the risk I ran that my science story could be dismissed as sugar coating on a science education pill, so I made sure the story pulled its weight. I remembered being impressed with Galileo's Dialogue of the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican, an imaginary debate between Salviati, the forward-thinking Copernican, and Simplicio, the Ptolemaic. In between them stood Sagredo, an open-minded intelligent layman. The work was written in popular Italian rather than scholarly Latin in order that his ideas would be accessible to the public. (It had the unfortunate effect of insulting the Pope--he reckoned Simplicio was an insulting caricature of himself which landed Galileo in a heap of trouble with the church.)
Ted
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