Name: Bright sky, starry city
ISBN: 9781554984053

Uma Krishnaswami

Phoebe helps her dad set up telescopes on the sidewalk outside his store. It's a special night -- Saturn and Mars are going to appear together in the sky. But will Phoebe be able to see them with all the city lights?

Bright sky, starry city

renee badenoch

When I was very little girl, I was told the biblical myth of Abraham being told by god to stare at the stars in the night sky. Abraham was told, "Your descendants shall be as many as the stars in the sky." I had grown up under city lights and had not a sky full of stars before. I remember saying, "That's not very many? Maybe five?" 

Phoebe, the precocious protagonist of Uma Krishnaswami's Bright Sky, Starry City experiences a dismay over living in the city and not being able to see stars. Spending the day with her father at a store where he sells telescopes, she longs to see the stars, and to be able to look up at Saturn's moons (One of them from which she is named for). Phoebe gets her wish when a thunderstorm causes a city blackout. As the thunderstorm clears but the power is not back out yet, Phoebe and the rest of the city step out and marvel at the stars. Krishnaswami's beautiful prose speaks to the awe-inspiring, spiritual sense of wonder humans feel when staring at the night sky. 


Phoebe breathed into the night, 
with all it's stars and planets. 
"What a bright, bright sky," she whispered. 
"It's a starry city all right," said Dad. 
And it was. 

Soon the lights would come back on, 
and everyone would hurry off. 
But for a brief time, above the dark city, 
there was the bright night sky. 
The bright night sky, 
with the stars in their constellations, 
and the planets wheeling in their orbits." 
 

A great book to pair with Elin Kelsey's You are Stardust, and Marion Dane Bauer's The Stuff of Stars

Bright sky, starry city

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