The eight planets in the solar system are introduced through a gimmicky beauty-pageant-type "Favorite Planet Competition." A creepy anthropomorphized planet trots across each double-page spread, announcing random (and sometimes in poor taste) facts; Venus: "She's bright, she's beautiful, and she's smoking hot." The illustrations try, but there are a lot of similarities among the smiley-faced space bodies.

Gr 2-4 Amusingly framed as a cheesy popularity contest, this parade of personified planets features illustrations in which rotund, recognizably marked caricatures of these heavenly bodies pose and mug, surrounded by an entourage of relevant though unidentified scientists, space probes, satellites both natural and artificial, books, constellations, and astronomical symbols. After introducing the contestants one by one, ex-planet emcee Pluto invites viewers to choose the winner: Venus, perhaps? "She's bright, she's beautiful, and she's smoking hot." Or "massive, gassive Jupiter"? For young judges who prefer to make decisions by the numbers, the final three spreads are packed with charts, physical facts, and quizzes, all of which are supplemented by much more of the same in a dedicated area of the publisher's website. Though the only visual key to each spread is buried in the massive online teacher's guide where few young readers will find it on their own, and a claim in one quiz that "life as we know it" could not survive the temperatures on other planets is incorrect, the breezy, unconventional approach makes this a promisingly engaging way to introduce, or re-introduce, our celestial neighbors. John Peters, formerly at New York Public Library