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THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE SKY by Steve Zeitlin

THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE SKY

Creation Stories and Cosmologies from Around the World

by Steve Zeitlin & illustrated by Chris Raschka

Pub Date: Oct. 15th, 2000
ISBN: 0-8050-4816-2
Publisher: Henry Holt

“One person’s religion is often another’s mythology,” writes the author. He could have added “or science,” because into this study of how diverse cultures have explained or interpreted the universe he folds chapters on both European cosmology from Ptolemy to Galileo, and on the Big Bang and string theory. Interspersing briefly told creation myths printed in a different typeface, he begins with views of Earth and Sky as Man and Woman (Maori and ancient Egyptian). In a chapter titled “Something out of Nothing,” he pairs the origin of the Greek gods and the first part of Genesis. Next he goes on to summarize cyclical views (Hindu, Norse), the heliocentric theory challenged by Copernicus and Kepler, the cosmos as a woman (Jain), a mirror (Haitian Vodou), a series of animal images, even, for a small Amazonian group, a brain. Finally, as “The Cosmic Egg,” ancient Chinese and modern scientific scenarios. Raschka opens each chapter with a design drawn from an appropriate culture’s artifacts. Zeitlin not only puts the scientific study of the cosmos into an unusual context (carefully pointing out the essential difference between telling stories, and actually testing them), he draws fascinating comparisons throughout, then closes with enthusiastic notes on sources and further reading. The result is a thought-provoking companion to Virginia Hamilton’s more story-oriented In the Beginning (1988). (bibliography) (Nonfiction. 11-14)