Although most books in the DK Eyewitness series are at least slightly problematic in the text, our family enjoys a number of them entirely for the sake of the pictures. Eyewitness: Astronomy is one of the ones I wouldn't bother with even for the pictures. Although there are many beautiful photos, the book overall is both disappointing and even problematic in places. In looking for a book about astronomy for my children, I wanted something that covered the facts about stars, planets, galaxies, etc., with beautiful photos and interesting text about what science knows (or believes) so far - particularly from the starting point of what children are able to see from their own observation or from straightforward photos and illustrations.
Although there is a certain amount of basic science covered here, I thought there was an exorbitant emphasis on astrology and how it developed into astronomy and a lot of history of science details (some of which is disputable.) I thought the DK Space Encyclopedia (reviewed below) was much nicer (and certainly more thorough) in what it covered and even showed a much fairer hand in dealing with Church-related issues such as Galileo.
love2learn.net
