Littlefae is a HUGE fan of Non-fiction books particularly science and engineering books and is beginning to grow a love for history too. This book Secrets in the Skies: Galileo and the Astonishing Solar System offers the best of both worlds with its tale of the remarkable courage of Galileo to challenge everything we knew about astronomy.
Galileo was responsible for groundbreaking and shocking scientific discoveries about our solar system actually being a solar centric system not the universe rotating around our planet.
This book doesn’t just tell us about the controversy caused by his findings culminating in a Heresy trial by the Church it also tells us about his life, inspirations and the events that led up to his discoveries.
It also looks at the heritage of astronomy that Galileo was working within from Stone Age observers of the stars to the challenges between the thinking of Western and Islamic philosophers and mathematicians.
Furthermore the book looks forward through time to note and define the scientists and mathematicians who have since taken up the mantle to learn more about the skies above us finally looking at the state of today.
This book is excellent, not just for exploring the historical event of Galileo’s trial in the context of learning about the Renaissance or the Solar System, but it opens the thinking to cause and consequence, how the ideas of Galileo fit into the thinking of the time and what may have inspired his interest to lead to these findings. Hanging a human face on the science and history so to speak.
Overall, Secrets in the Skies: Galileo and the Astonishing Solar System is a great cross-curricular book that offers discussions about science, history, religious education and philosophy pivoting around a key historical event. I would certainly be interested in more from this series to explore with Littlefae.
Secrets in the Skies: Galileo and the Astonishing Solar System by Giles Sparrow & James Weston Lewis is published by Wren and Rook a Hachette imprint.
I like the sound of this, I’m awful with non fiction and facts, so love books like this that make it ‘about a person but really about all of it’!
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Yes, this one is really clever as there’s so much information yet it feels like a detailed storybook!
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