Close Up & Far Out by Mary Auld

Close Up & Far Out demonstrates how two 17^th-century scientists opened windows on the very large and the very small.

Close Up & Far Out: Seeing the World Differently by Mary Auld, illustrated by Adria Meserve. Creative Editions, 2024, 38 pages.

Reading Level: Picture Book, ages 4-8

Recommended for: Ages 6-10

“This book is about two men who asked questions about how things worked. Today we would call them scientists. Then they were known as natural philosophers.” Their lives overlapped: Galileo the Italian was a professor of mathematics. Van Leeuwenhoek the Dutchman was a cloth merchant. Sixty years separated them but both were instrumental to the Scientific Revolution, and both made their important contributions to science through the medium of glass lenses. Galileo invented the first practical telescope for space exploration, while Van Leeuwenhoek opened the microscopic world with his own lens-grinding experiments. Both met opposition and both persevered, achieving “fatherhood”—Galileo of physics, Van Leeuwenhoek of microbiology.

Their stories are told in alternating pages with blocky, eye-catching illustrations, some in double-page spreads, others in panels or sidebar-style details. Galileo’s famous quarrel with the church is often misunderstood, and too complicated to explain in a picture book, but the author summarizes it this way: “The Bible, [Galileo] believes, show him the way to heaven, but not the way the heavens work.” Fair enough. Both men “remind us to ask questions, to look close up and far out for answers . . . and be brave enough to think differently.”

Bottom Line: An introduction to two founding fathers of science, told in a way both entertaining and instructive.                                           

Also at Redeemed Reader:  

• Reviews: All in a Drop is an excellent young person’s biography of Van Leeuwenhoek. And we love The Girl Who Drew Butterflies, a biography of 17^th century biologist Maria Merian.
• Reviews: Beyond Infinity describes the development and discoveries of the James Webb telescope, while Exploring Space: From Galileo to the Mars Rover is a one-stop shop for developing space nerds.

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