"Stardust from Space" by Monica Grady and Lucia deLeiris

Stardust From Space, written by Monica Grady and illustrated by Lucia deLeiris, is an elegant love letter written about the birth, life, death, and restoration of stardust, telling us in simple, fluid, readable language where it originates and how it is spread through the solar system and the universe itself. We are left at the end in awe that we are, indeed, all stardust.

"What is stardust?" asks the blurb, before continuing, "It made our sun, built the planets, the Moon...formed the stars." 

The first two-page spread of the main story opens out to a gorgeous watercolour painting of pink twilight with a yellow crescent moon among a dazzling sprinkling of stars. The stunning night sky is reflected in a calm river or lake blushing with the tinge of the last of dusk. This illustration is only one of a series of gorgeous watercolours carefully drawn by the capable hand of Lucia deLeiris. The prose accompanying the art is fluid, poetic, and simple to understand and follow, in such a manner even children young as four or five may enjoy reading the book. 

From there, the author invites us back in time to watch the journey of stardust, whirling us all the way back to the formation of the solar system, when the sun was just a baby (well, technically, a protostar), and the planets, including Earth, were all but promising buds of the diverse worlds they are today. It goes on from there to introduce us to the graceful comets, the "time capsules" that are meteroites, the Moon itself, and even to the asteroids lying between Mars and Jupiter. 

Keeping close to the theme of the life cycle of star dust, we eventually come to the death of our star, where they explain how some stars much more massive than our own sun go supernova, sending off more dust and gas into space to be recycled into new planets, moons, and stars. The only thing I wish they had added is that while our sun won't die in a dramatic fashion, it will nevertheless still send gas and dust away into the universe when it puffs off all its outer layers as a beautiful "planetary nebula" when it runs out of the last of its hydrogen and helium fuel, leaving behind a white dwarf. 

Nevertheless, the book leaves us with a positive assurance that the ending isn't a sad one, at least for the motes of dust and gas, and that they will travel through the universe to become part of a newly forming star or planet. 

I would absolutely recommend this book to parents with young children just beginning to be curious about the world around them, including what lies beyond our world, out there in the depths of space. While it is well-research and definitely has a lot of cool facts, it strikes me more as a quiet bedtime read rather than something to use for, say, a school project or educational purposes for teachers.