Exploring Saturn

Sandy Campbell is a reference librarian in the Science and Technology Library at the University of Alberta.

After years of writing and editing magazine articles and columns, Dan
Bortolotti has burst onto the book-publishing scene with three books in
2003 and a fourth in the works. Exploring Saturn details “everything
we know about Saturn and how we learned it.” This is an excellent
in-depth work that contains good historical background as well as
up-to-date facts and images. Adults, as well as children, will learn
from this book. In spite of its factual depth, the book is written in
accessible language that is informal enough to hold a preteen’s
attention. In describing Saturn’s satellites, Bortolotti says,
“Phoebe, the rebel, marches to her own drummer” and “Mimas must be
one tough piece of ice.”

The illustrations are superb. Many are photographs provided by NASA or
the Jet Propulsion Lab; others are computer-enhanced images. It is
sometimes difficult to distinguish the drawings from mechanically or
electronically generated images, so Bortolotti is careful to indicate
when he has used a drawing rather than a photograph.

Exploring Saturn contains several charts, including one each for
Saturn’s tilt over the next eight years, the ring system, the
satellites, and a comparison with Earth. These will all be very useful
for upper-elementary-school projects. The last chapter of the book is
dedicated to the Cassini–Huygens Mission, which will reach Titan,
Saturn’s largest satellite, in December 2004. At that point, every
child interested in space will want to borrow this book. Highly
recommended.