Last year I reviewed the excellent Superpowered Animals. Once again, publisher Phaidon and illustrator Sonia Pullido have teamed up to produce the equally gorgeous, geology-inspired What A Rock Can Reveal, written by Maya Wei Haas. It’s a rock lovers paradise!
What Is What a Rock Can Reveal?
It’s a 48-page large format hardback for children that teaches the basics of geology, opening with the potentially controversial observation that “there’s no such thing as a boring rock.” The book then sets out to prove it!
“Don’t let a simple stone trick you. Every rock you’ll ever find has an exciting story to tell. Let’s discover how to read them.”
There are no photographs in the book. All the rocks featured are illustrations.
What a Rock Can Reveal goes on to tell us what the colors and texture of a rock might mean, what a mineral is, and which types of rock a volcano makes (including one of my all-time favorite words, pahoehoe). We also learn about the structure of the Earth, how mountains were formed, and how sand is made.
All of this adds up to a beautifully illustrated introduction to geology, including pages devoted to meteors and the geology of the Moon, Mars, and celestial objects beyond.
Why Read What a Rock Can Reveal?
What a Rock Can Reveal 100% proves its opening proclamation. Most of us take rocks for granted, We don’t give them much thought (other than, perhaps, when we find one in our shoe). Yet each one tells a story.
The reason I enjoy books like this is that they remind you of things that you sort of knew. They prompt us to remember those tidbits of knowledge that have slipped down the cracks between school timetables, what’s for dinner this week, and when to pick up the dry cleaning. (Which, admittedly, since the pandemic, has been “never.”)
Children’s non-fiction books take us out of the humdrum and remind us how great the world around us is. They remind us that everything has its own beauty and that everything can tell a story. Planet Earth has been around for billions of years, and the very ground we walk on can tell us about it if we know where to look. What a Rock Can Reveal shows us where and how to look, and how to interpret what we’ve found. Better still, it shows us how to share this knowledge with our children and inspire them to take a look too.
If you would like to pick up a copy of What a Rock Can Reveal, you can do so here in the US, and here in the UK. (Affiliate Links)
If you enjoyed this review, check out my other book reviews.
I received a copy of this book in order to write this review.
