A history and science picture book that covers the development of man's understanding of the shape of the earth focusing on the discoveries of the Greeks and on the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Magellan. Currently out-of-print.

"Sunshine warms the earth. If the sun stopped shining, the earth would get colder and colder..." It is important for children to consider the importance of the sun in our lives. In Sunshine Makes the Seasons, children are introduced to the sun's role and in particular how the seasons change because of the earth's rotation around the sun and the tilt of the earth.

In a fashion similar to The Moon Seems to Change, an experiment involving an orange stuck into a pencil (again a styrofoam ball and a chopstick or pencil will work just as well) helps to illustrate the various points that are explained. First the child uses a flashlight with the "axis" of the earth pointed straight up and down to show how the seasons would always be the same in that scenario. Then we are shown that by tilting the earth, the length of each day changes throughout the year. We also see how the North and South Pole are special cases where the midwinter can have several weeks of darkness and midsummer can have continuous light. We also see that the seasons change very little at the equator and that the Northern and Southern hemispheres have opposite seasons from each other. Again, this book covers substantial information in a very simple way and will be very useful and straightforward for early science lessons.