A Few Beautiful Moments – Lisa Connors
Chris and I traveled to northern Spain this month to see the total solar eclipse. Why this one? Well, we had never seen one. But more special was that totality was to pass through the area of Spain we lived during Chris’ sabbatical in 2003 – Asturias. We planned to be on a trail, but after we arrived and learned it was happening an hour before sunset, we realized we needed to be more careful in finding the right spot where nothing would block the view of the setting sun. Chris has a shade map app, and between that and scoping out a few areas the days before, we decided that right up the street from our hotel would be best. And we had success. There were no clouds until right at totality, but they did not detract from the phenomenon. Our pictures below were just with my smartphone. For me the best part was the few magical moments where day became night in an instant.
I knew I wanted to find a picture book about a total solar eclipse and found A Few Beautiful Moments: Experiencing a Solar Eclipse by Kate Allen Fox and illustrated by Khoa Le (Little, Brown and Company, 2023) at our local library. This book is a sweet introduction to a solar eclipse with some science in the back matter. It does a good job of building some anticipation for the main event – seeing the corona – and then captures the quiet and special minutes when totality happens. The digital illustrations are whimsical, yet realistic enough for young readers to build proper prior knowledge of a solar eclipse should they ever get to see one.
I noted however as I was reading it that the moon was being shown going left to right which was opposite of what we saw. How could such a mistake have been made? But it turns out that if one is in the southern hemisphere, you look north toward the sun, which reverses the perspective and makes the moon appear to move from left to right. In the northern hemisphere where we were, looking south toward the midday sun, the moon’s orbital motion from west to east makes it appear to move from right to left across the sun. As soon as I looked this up, I had an ‘of course’ moment as I recalled that this also happens with the phases of the moon in the southern hemisphere. So, no mistake was made, but it would have been nice to point this out in the backmatter.
A Few Beautiful Moments is a wonderful way to introduce a total solar eclipse to your young reader.
