I'd have killed for this book when I was ten. Children's books about astronomy were thin on the ground back then, and books about the skies of the Southern Hemisphere, written for Australians, were rarer still.

Ragbir Bhathal is a writer and astrophysicist at the University of Western Sydney, and was Foundation Chairman of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Australia Centre; his co-author, Jenny Bhathal, is his daughter. Together, they have produced a thoroughly user-friendly book which should fascinate all right-minded children.

As well as discussing how to observe the night sky from your own backyard with relatively inexpensive equipment (such as second-hand binoculars) or the naked eye, the authors also explain clearly and simply all the basic astronomical phenomena: the solar system, the formation of stars, eclipses and so on. The book is intended for children from about 10 to 14 years old, and there are many clear charts and diagrams illustrating the concepts in the text. These include simple Southern Hemisphere star charts, which could be useful well beyond childhood for people trying to find a particular star or constellation in the night sky.

Appropriately, this Australian book has a strong emphasis on Australian Aboriginal myths and legends about the stars, balancing the European constellations and star names, which are more familiar to most of us. The authors tell us, for example, that the Aboriginal stories about constellations vary depending on whether people live inland or near the coast; if they are near the coast, the stories will often involve fish or fishing. So, at Yirrkalla, what we call the Southern Cross is a stingray that is constantly being chased across the sky by a shark (the Pointers). Some Arnhem Land stories see the Pleiades as a group of wives sitting together at one end of a canoe with their husbands at the other end
(the stars of Orion's belt).

Australian Backyard Astronomy is published by the National Library of Australia in Canberra, and it uses the library map and photograph collection to great advantage, with reproductions of fascinating celestial maps from the 17th and 18th centuries, and photographs of Australian telescopes and observatories. There are also excellent photos of all sorts of wonder-inducing astronomical phenomena, such as the gas pillars in the Eagle Nebula.

Sure to be well-received by budding astronomers.