Good evening and welcome to boring books for bedtime. I hope tonight's installment provides all the boredom your busy brain needs to quiet down and let you get some sleep for once.

So lie back, adjust your volume. Take a nice deep breath and off we go.

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Now let's get to this evening's reading.

Tonight we're enjoying a special little volume, Astronomy for Young Folks by Isabel Martin Lewis A.m.

connected with the Nautical Almanac Office of the U.S. Naval Observatory, copyright 1921 by the Century Company and 1922 by Duffielden Company, New York.

Let's begin.

Preface.

Astronomy, it has been said, is the oldest and the noblest of the sciences.

Yet it is one of the few sciences for which most present-day educators seem to find little, if any, room in their curriculum of study

for the young, in spite of its high cultural value, it is, we are told, to abstruse a subject for the youthful student.

This is doubtless true of theoretical or mathematical astronomy, and the practical astronomy

of the navigator, surveyor, and engineer.

But it is not true of general descriptive astronomy.

There are many different aspects of this many-sided science,

and some of the simplest and grandest truths of astronomy can be grasped by the intelligent child of 12 or 14 years of age.

Merely as a branch of nature study, the child should have some knowledge of the sun, moon, stars, and planets, their motions, and their physical features, for they are as truly a part of nature as are

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