{"id":5238,"date":"2020-11-29T00:01:53","date_gmt":"2020-11-29T06:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=5238"},"modified":"2020-11-29T09:21:12","modified_gmt":"2020-11-29T15:21:12","slug":"7-imps-7-kicks-719-featuring-jason-chin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=5238","title":{"rendered":"7-Imp\u2019s 7 Kicks #719: Featuring Jason Chin"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\nJason Chin’s newest picture book, Your Place in the Universe<\/a><\/strong><\/em> (Neal Porter Books\/Holiday House, September 2020), is the kind of book that tiny-me would have looooooved<\/em>. As a child, I’d sit and think about the immeasurable vastness of the universe and wonder what, if anything, was at the edges of it. Chin’s book is all about scale, size, and distance \u2014 on our own planet and in the universe as a whole. And he expertly<\/em>, and beautifully, structures this small book about such a big cosmological subject \u2014 no small task, indeed.<\/p>\n

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The book begins, as you can see below, with eight-year-olds, looking through a telescope. They are, we read, “about five times as tall as this book.” But they’re only half as tall as the ostrich that approaches them. Chin continues to introduce us to even taller, grander things: We go from a giraffe to a redwood tree to the tallest buildings built by humans, even one under construction. After looking at the highest peak on Earth, we turn to the atmosphere, orienting the book vertically for a moment, and then outer space. We explore the vastness of our solar system until, eventually, we’re reading about galaxy clusters and “the cosmic web.” All of this manages\u2014especially at the book’s close when we return to the eight-year-olds\u2014to put our place in the universe (just as the title promises) into perspective: <\/p>\n

In the vast cosmic web, in the Milky Way, in the solar system, there is a small blue planet called Earth. Earth is the only planet we know of with life. It’s the only planet we know of with trees, giraffes, and ostriches. It’s the only planet we know of with kids who can look up and imagine … their place in the universe.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chin, who also co-designed the book, takes complicated and awesome (in the truest sense of the word) concepts and makes them understandable for young readers. His illustrations are beguiling and manage to pack in a lot of information without being too busy. (And the book’s abundant back matter provides even more information.) Check out the “universe is everything” spread below, and tell me you aren’t captivated. Many of these spreads are truly breathtaking; this is a book infused with wonder. <\/p>\n

And if readers didn’t get a sense of Chin’s wonder for the subject matter, this would still be a detailed, informative read, but it’s that wonder, his sense of amazement over it all, that takes the book to new heights (bad pun intended). <\/p>\n

Here are some illustrations for you to enjoy. …
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“The universe is everything:
every star and every galaxy, every planet, and all of space. …”<\/em>
(Click spread to enlarge and read text in its entirety)<\/center>
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“… their place in the universe.”<\/em>
(Click spread to enlarge)<\/center>
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(Click cover to enlarge)<\/em><\/center>
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\nYOUR PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE. Text and illustrations copyright \u00a9 2020 by Jason Chin. Illustrations reproduced by permission of the publisher, Neal Porter Books, an imprint of Holiday House, New York.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Note for any new readers: 7-Imp\u2019s 7 Kicks is a weekly meeting ground for taking some time to reflect on Seven(ish) Exceptionally Fabulous, Beautiful, Interesting, Hilarious, or Otherwise Positive Noteworthy Things from the past week, whether book-related or not, that happened to you. New kickers are always welcome.<\/p>\n

* * * Jules’s Kicks * * *<\/strong><\/font>
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1)<\/strong><\/font> Walks. <\/p>\n

2)<\/strong><\/font> Chocolate silk pie. <\/p>\n

3)<\/strong><\/font> Ahsoka<\/a><\/strong> on The Mandalorian<\/em>! (Ahsoka Tano has been my daughters’ very favorite Star Wars<\/em> character for yeeeeeears<\/em> now.) <\/p>\n

4)<\/strong><\/font> Being reminded this past week of this poem<\/a><\/strong> by Jane Kenyon<\/a><\/strong>. It’s a good giving-thanks kind of poem. <\/p>\n

5)<\/strong><\/font> Andrew Bird bringing us more holiday music<\/a><\/strong>:
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\n6)<\/strong><\/font> Watching The Happiest Season<\/a><\/strong><\/em> with my family. Our first holiday movie this year. Even more entertaining is seeing the reaction on Twitter (that Abby should have ran off with Riley \u2014 can’t say that I disagree!). <\/p>\n

7)<\/strong><\/font> This picture my husband got of our tree:
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\nWhat are YOUR<\/font><\/strong> kicks this week?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Jason Chin’s newest picture book, Your Place in the Universe (Neal Porter Books\/Holiday House, September 2020), is the kind of book that tiny-me would have looooooved. As a child, I’d sit and think about the immeasurable vastness of the universe and wonder what, if anything, was at the edges of it. Chin’s book is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,26,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seven-good-things-before-monday","category-nonfiction","category-picture-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}