As indicated by the subtitle, Up, Up High: The Secret Poetry of Earth’s Atmosphere by Lydia Lukidis, illustrated by Katie Rewse is a poetic collection with details about the various layers of the atmosphere, told with the perspective of a journey to space in a rocket ship, showing what might be seen and experienced outside the window as the rocket propels into space. Each page show the altitude and atmosphere layer in a small corner sidebar, a couple of lines of poetry about what is seen outside, and then a more in depth explanation in smaller font. Thus, Up, Up High provides a few levels of learning for a young learner.
The poetry of Up, Up High is very readable, although I’d say the text is more poetic rather than poetry. Here’s an example from the thermosphere, when the poems are talking about the Northern Lights,
Waves of blue,
yellow,
and green
merge together like magic,
shimmering
and shifting
in a sea of color.
This language is beautiful to read and poetic in its approach to describing the view of the lights. Many other pages have similar poetic language in addition to the detailed sidebar with a smaller font that describes the science. Some pages have clear onomatopoeia for the different pages, like “FWOOSH!” for a meteor and “BOOM! CRACK!” for the layer with a thunderstorm to add to the excitement and poetic nature.
I love the very beginning where the language wonders “Where does the sky end and space begin?”, because that is exactly the question that started my journey in looking for books to teach about the concept of layers of the atmosphere. The book speaks directly to the reader as the imaginary rocket journey continues (“Up, / up / high / you go”) which draws the reader into the text. Beautiful illustrations round out the text, making this a fantastic option for learning about the atmospsheric layers.
