Meteor! is a 1987 children's picture book by author Patricia Polacco. Polacco is well known for writing and illustrating novels depicting events from her childhood in Michigan. Meteor! was published in 1987 by The Trumpet Club, commonly known for publications of children’s books from grades PreK-6. The novel is about Patricia, her brother Richard, and Cousin Steve as young children spending time with their grandparents on their farm in Michigan. It seems to be a normal summer night until a flash from the sky and a crash in the yard.

According to Publishers Weekly, "Based on a true event, this enchanting book overwhelmingly expresses the magic that suddenly pervades a small town, from the funny folksy way the story is told to the imaginative, full color illustrations."

Booklist says, "Polacco’s full-color pictures are completely in tandem with the telling".

Story

The novel tells the story of Patricia, her brother Steve, and her cousin Steve spending the summer at their grandparents' farm in Union City, Michigan. Late one night while sitting in their cozy home, a bright light falls from the sky landing in the Gaw’s farm with a loud crash. Curiosity overcomes the family as they set foot outside to find a fallen star in their backyard. One line in the book reads, “Of all the places on earth a meteor could have fallen, it landed smack-dab in the middle of our yard, Gramma exclaimed.” This was such a huge deal for the residents of Mudsock Medow. Word gets around quickly, and before long there is a carnival at the Gaw farm. There is a band, a circus, a hot air balloon, and more. The entire town gathers to celebrate the meteor. Many residents touched the meteor claiming it was magical. It seemed like magic to all that the fallen star, which flew through the galaxy, had landed in Union City and brought such joy to all.

A meteoroid is a small rocky or metallic body travelling through space. Meteoroids are significantly smaller than asteroids, and range in size from small grains to 1 meter-wide objects. Objects smaller than this are classified as micrometeoroids or space dust. Most are fragments from comets or asteroids, whereas others are collision impact debris ejected from bodies such as the Moon or Mars.

When a meteoroid, comet or asteroid enters the Earth's atmosphere at a speed typically in excess of 20 km/s (72,000 km/h; 45,000 mph), aerodynamic heating of that object produces a streak of light, both from the glowing object and the trail of glowing particles that it leaves in its wake. This phenomenon is called a meteor or "shooting star". A series of many meteors appearing seconds or minutes apart, and appearing to originate from the same fixed point in the sky, is called a meteor shower. If that object withstands ablation from its passage through the atmosphere as a meteor and impacts with the ground, it is then called a meteorite.

Meteor is a 1979 science fiction Technicolor disaster film in which scientists detect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth and struggle with international, Cold War politics in their efforts to prevent disaster. The movie starred Sean Connery and Natalie Wood.

It was directed by Ronald Neame from a screenplay by Edmund H. North and Stanley Mann, which was inspired by a 1967 MIT report Project Icarus. The movie co-starred Karl Malden, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, Trevor Howard, Joseph Campanella, Richard Dysart and Henry Fonda.

Plot

After the asteroid Orpheus is hit by a comet, a five-mile chunk of Orpheus is sent on a collision course towards Earth, which will cause an extinction-level event. While the United States government engages in political maneuvering, smaller asteroid fragments precede the main body, wreaking havoc on the planet. The United States has a secret orbiting nuclear missile platform satellite named Hercules, which was designed by Dr. Paul Bradley (Sean Connery). It was intended to defend Earth against a massive space rock, but instead was demoted to become an orbiting super weapon now aimed at Russia. However, its fourteen nuclear missiles are not enough to stop the meteor.