One hundred years before the invention of the telescope, Nicolaus Copernicus challenged the way people had always thought of the Universe.  Even as a child in Poland at the end of the 1400s, he was a keen observer of the everyday world, especially the objects in the sky.  When he grew up he studied to become a clergyman and a physician.  But he never gave up his love for astronomy, and he never stopped asking questions about what he observed.  Why does Mars appear to move backward?  Why do all the heavenly bodies seem to circle above us?  During Copernicus's lifetime, scholars believed that the Earth did not move and that the heavenly bodies circled it.  Copernicus believed differently.  Before he died, he found the courage to write his theories down and get them published, even though doing so meant going against the beliefs of the scholars who had come before him.  Nicolaus Copernicus did not just observe the world around him—he changed the world around him.

Through Dennis Brindell Fradin's insightful text and Cynthia Von Buhler's expressive oil paintings, Nicolaus Copernicus's life and beliefs are illuminated for young readers.

From the dust jacket