Light Up Your Life; Planet Ocean; Satellite Fever; The Space Place

The Rolph/Balkwill combo has already recorded a string of hits making sense of science (e.g. The Egg and Sperm Race, Collins), so their involvement with this new series whets the appetite more than somewhat. And we are not disappointed; Rolph's flexibility as an illustrator accommodates all four subjects and, as always, greatly amplifies the meaning of the texts. These are highly readable, and in Space Place and Planet Ocean especially, provide no little humour. In the former, the girl from Mars (Britain's first space astronaut remember) takes us on a simulated space mission, concentrating on the everyday aspects of weightless living, so eating, sleeping and using the air-closet, often sneezing, never burping and drinking recycled urine - all regular parts of space-life - are engagingly featured. You can get better maps of most planetary surface than you can of our own seabed says Brian Bett in Planet Ocean, prior to taking us on another simulated journey. This time it is in a mini-sub (no proper lavatory there, either) to discover gulper eels, hydrothermal vents and, of course, discarded cola cans. Satellite Fever is necessarily a technical oeuvre and shows the versatility and range of these flying wonderboxes, of which there are now hundreds in orbit. With lots of help from Rolph, Phillips in Light Up Your Life, after explaining lots of other photo-phenomena, provides the best explanation of lasers I have seen yet and devotes plenty of space to them. See the author in hologram on the back cover, too.

This is a highly attractive quartet, all of which provide lots of well-expressed information and any of which may be read end-to-end for pleasure; in fact that is probably the best way to set about them, as there is not a shred of an index anywhere.