From the Publisher
"This eye-opening book will have children examining the world anew, and is a unique addition to the earth science shelves." —School Library Journal
School Library Journal
11/17/2023
Gr 2–4—Whether showing the towering mountains of grit in the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park in Utah, the rocky cliffs of the Cabrillo National Monument in California, or the graceful swoops of The Wave at Vermillion Cliffs National Monument in Arizona, full-color photographs make Kinser's point over and over. Nature, with water—sometimes ice—and wind, scrapes out the most magnificent landscapes. "It shapes and shaves a dome, an arch, a hoodoo, or a wave," the narrator notes, with examples that show steady but otherworldly erosion that has beauty in its geometry. She shows how ice can split a rock cleanly in two, create the glacial paths of the Grand Canyon, and reduce the black sands of Punalu'u Beach, Hawaii, to soft stones no larger than grains of cornmeal. The book takes the full tour of national parks in the U.S. before settling readers down with facts of weathering, erosion, and deposition. Further explanation of how nature's tools—and human ones, like moving soil and rock during construction or farming—change the land is included, as are some of the effects explored in the poetic, compelling narrative. A glossary and further resources round out the back matter. VERDICT This eye-opening book will have children examining the world anew, and is a unique addition to the earth science shelves.—Kimberly Olson Fakih
Kirkus Reviews
2023-06-08
Admire nature’s awesome artistry.
The author of a book of microscopic images—Small Matters (2020)—turns to nature on a much larger scale here. Combining stunning stock photographs with rhythmic, poetic lines, Kinser has created a work that will have readers and listeners eager to travel to national parks and protected areas around the world. She shows and tells how—through weathering, erosion, and deposition—water, ice, and wind create amazing natural features such as Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, California, and a hoodoo in Goblin Valley State Park, Utah. Further afield, she includes photographs of Split Apple Rock, just offshore in New Zealand, and amazing rock striations created by the Russell Glacier in Greenland. The verse contains rhymes and a pleasing repetition of vowel sounds; the rhythm is steady and inexorable—appropriate to the long-term processes it describes. The language is filled with active verbs (“etches, scrapes, and carves,” “shapes and shaves”) and apt figurative language—ice is compared to a “grinder,” and a windstorm is referred to as a “rugged file.” Through both words and images, Kinser makes unfamiliar formation names like tafone easy to understand. The backmatter includes more detail about processes as well as a glossary. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
An impressive STEM read-aloud. (further reading, websites) (Informational picture book. 5-9)
