American and German students, along with their families attended the Military Child Education Coalition's "Tell Me A Story" event on Saturday, February 26, 2011 at the Stuttgart Planetarium.

Deployment can be a stressful time for military members and their families. With this in mind the story selected for this event, "Night Catch" by Brenda Ehrmantraut, is about a father who comes up with a way of staying in touch with his son, by playing catch with the North Star.

General William E. "Kip" Ward, commander of U. S. Africa Command, along with Burgermeister Edgar Hemmerich, Mayor of Plieningen, read to nearly 100 students in both English and German as the pages of the book were illuminated above in the planetarium dome.

The "Tell Me A Story" program was designed to show military parents and children how to use literature to make connections and better prepare families for when a service member deploys.

"This program allows them [military children] to have exposure to a way of staying connected as we move around, as we are separated," said Ward, "and even though it's devoted to a child and their parent, it could apply to friends as they move around, ways of staying connected, and it provides an idea about how to do that that's refreshing, that's educational."

Following the reading, under the rays of flashing lights and music that made the audience feel as if they were traveling through space, the planetarium director, Dr. Uve Lemmer, unveiled the planetarium star projector. He then gave a short lesson on how to locate the North Star. Sitting beneath the glistening stars as they were projected above, students were shown the big dipper, and the constellations in relation to the North Star.

Lemmer mentioned how finding the North Star by using the Big Dipper was so famous that it even made its way on to the Alaska flag. He went on to say how the flag was designed by a 13 year old school boy in 1927 as part of a contest to come up with a new state flag. The blue in the flag represents the blue Alaskan sky; the Big Dipper stars are a part of the constellation the Great Bear, which symbolizes strength. The North Star represents the most northern state of the union.

"So this flag won the contest. So you see even if you are small or young you can make history, just by having the right idea," he said.

The audience was treated to a special guest as Professor Ernst Messerschmid, a German astronaut, shared his photos and experience of space travel. Messerschmid flew on the last mission of the shuttle Challenger 25 years ago and explained how it takes 90 minutes to circle the Earth one time and in 24 hours you can circle the Earth 16 times.

"When you are an astronaut you become a member of a club called the Association of Space Explorers. The only condition is you have to circle the Earth once or several times," he said. "I did it 112 times in one week."

The event closed with guests being rocked out by Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" as the room filled with smoke and lasers.

The "Tell Me A Story" event was a joint German-American friendship event hosted by the U.S. Africa Command Education Department, AFRICOM Family Readiness Group and the German American Women's Group. Each family received a complimentary copy of the book signed by Ward, Hemmerich and Messerschmid.