The New York Times reviews my Hubble biography

A lovely review of THE BOY WHOSE HEAD WAS FILLED WITH STARS in the New York Times, by Nicola Davies:

The cyclical nature of many scientific phenomena provides writers with ready-made narrative structures, but a human life story can be tricky to handle in a picture book: What to include, what to leave out when you have so few words and pages? In “The Boy Whose Head Was Filled With Stars,” Isabelle Marinov and Deborah Marcero get it just right. Edwin Hubble is a colossal figure in astronomy. His research proved that the Milky Way is just one among an infinite number of galaxies. He’s difficult to summarize. Beginning with the words “Edwin was a curious boy,” Marinov succeeds in distilling Hubble’s life to the essence of youthful curiosity, bringing readers back time and again to the three key questions to which he sought answers: “How many stars are in the sky? How did the universe begin? Where did it come from?” (themselves typeset in a glimmering silver foil). Marcero’s tender illustrations remind readers on every page that the experience of looking at a dark, starry sky shaped Edwin’s life.

Of course there are many things missing from this small biography. No book can tell you everything, nor should it try to. The job of nonfiction is to build the fire of curiosity and to instill in readers the idea that while knowledge is finite, questions and the ability to ask them are not. In Edwin Hubble’s words, “We do not know why we are born into the world, but we can try to find out what sort of world it is.”

Nicola Davies is a zoologist and prolific children’s author. Her most recent picture books are “Grow: Secrets of Our DNA” and “Last: The Story of a White Rhino.”