Stikky Remedial Astronomy

I found another great book for remedial astronomy. Stikky Night Skies, published by Laurence Holt Books (no author listed, apparently a team effort). The subtitle is "Learn 6 constellations, 4 stars, a planet, a galaxy, and how to navigate at night - in one hour, guaranteed." That's a tall order, but it comes through with an innovative visual approach to presenting and reinforcing the information. There are two other books in this Stikky series (trees and stock charts, oddly enough), and it looks like there are more on the way.

I like this approach - taking a small chunk of knowledge and presenting it in a sequential, visually oriented, and easy to follow way. The nice thing about the sky version is that in addition to some easy to attain goals, it gives you a framework for exploring and learning more of the sky. By combining this with The Backyard Stargazer, I think this can be the summer that my daughter and I finally learn our way around the sky. We tried a couple of summers ago with a few nights of meteor shower watching and an ill-advised telescope purchase. This naked-eye approach looks much more promising.