(2) K-3 Illustrated by Uma Krishnaswamy. A young girl passes by an unremarkable patch of ground on her way to and from school. One day she notices "something small and gray beneath a clump of weeds." She and her friends clear some of the weeds and accumulated garbage and find "stones upon even more stones." The children tell their elders, and word spreads throughout the neighboring villages. Everyone helps dig until they unearth steps leading to an ancient well. The girl's grandmother recalls stories from long ago about old wells that caught rainwater. And when the rains come, waking up "deep, sleeping springs," they send water to the old well. Slowly the dry and dusty fields turn green, and butterflies, bees, crickets, and other creatures return. Resembling tribal Gond art, the acrylic, poster-color, and watercolor illustrations are rich with details of traditional Indian village life, including people collecting firewood, women balancing water pots, carts piled with fruits and vegetables. Accompanying the lively prose, Krishnaswami's refrain -- "Look! Look!" -- captures the joy of discovery that unites the community. As the villagers work together to clear out the abandoned well, they learn about ancient methods of water preservation that bring the fields, flora, and fauna back to life. An author's note provides context.

Reviewer: Sadaf Siddique | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2024

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Marc Martin. "A stone is not just a stone," but instead a story, a record of dynamic processes occurring across large stretches of time. Booth's imaginative stories about one stone align with the major rock groups (not named in the main text, though the end pages and a glossary provide explanations) and employ dramatic descriptions of the events the stone experiences. The stone was "gushing from the mouth of a volcano," "crushed and dragged by a glacier," and "driven down / down / down / into deep searing darkness" before it reaches the hand of a child. The impressionistic watercolor illustrations are snapshots of places and times within these processes. Shadows of ancient flora and fauna, including birds, dinosaurs, and sea creatures, are framed by brown and black rock formations that convey solidity and timelessness, even within the dynamic volcanic, oceanic, and surficial landscapes. Readers are encouraged to seek out their own stones, "imagine everything the stone has been...and what it might become," and consider the continuity of change.

Reviewer: Danielle J. Ford | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2023

(2) 4-6 This spooky, dark, and utterly delicious tale begins with a bang: protagonist Garnet is vomiting up frogs, a pestilence that will ease only when she returns to Crossroad House, the house her mother grew up in and fled, vowing never to return. The occasion is a fraught one. Family patriarch Jasper Carrefour is dying, and the last time he was seriously ill, two decades ago in 1998, a wing of the house burned down, four family members were killed, two were gravely injured, and another girl went missing. The suspicion is that Jasper recovered by stealing each one's life force. At Crossroad House, Garnet learns the reason for her mother's self-imposed exile: a cousin foresaw Garnet's disappearance while visiting ruins on the grounds of Crossroad House. Unable to leave this magically enforced family reunion until Jasper "transitions," Garnet promises to avoid the ruins, but with the house itself playing tricks, her promise might be difficult to keep. Building on a family where element-based magic is commonplace (Garnet and her mother work with stones; others wield weather, plants, or even fire), Salerni sustains an atmosphere of menace through a death, several near-fatal accidents, and revelations of other ancestors' fates that Garnet learns about through a newfound talent for time-walking that connects her to her great-great-grandmother and the missing girl from 1998. Interconnected ­mysteries keep readers turning pages, and when they all converge, the payoff is spine-chilling and satisfying.

Reviewer: Anita L. Burkam | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2023

(3) K-3 National Geographic Readers series. Confident readers who love facts will appreciate the wide ranging (sometimes random) information about rocks and minerals in this leveled reader, which is organized in short, accessible chapters. There is a breathless excitement to much of the writing: "Humans even have to eat a mineral--salt--to survive!" The enthusiastic text is well supported by lots of captioned stock photos in a lively design that lends itself to browsing. In addition to two double-page spreads featuring "25 Facts About Rocks and Gems," all one hundred facts are reviewed in one very long list at book's end. An index is also included.

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Sam Boughton. Not a formally trained artist, Nek Chand built the famed Rock Garden in Chandigarh, India, "rock by rock," using discarded and found materials. Bradbury's text illuminates the artist's intuitive creative process as a means of easing his feelings of dislocation and homesickness after the Partition of India causes him and other Hindus to depart their ancestral villages, now considered part of the new Muslim nation of Pakistan. "That missing moved from his heart into his hands, and his hands knew what to do," writes Bradbury in the scene where Chand first finds the secluded piece of land on which he builds the garden, with its myriad sculptures, structures, and a "maze of tunnels and paths and arches and stairs." The garden serves as both a monument to the home Chand lost and a secret means of bringing joy and beauty to his new home. When others discover the garden (now grown to cover over forty acres), they are astounded, and the community rallies to save it from officials who threaten to tear it down in the name of development. Throughout, Boughton's illustrations burst with color. The art emulates Chand's use of found materials in its incorporation of newsprint and fabrics into digital collage. The illustrations make several overt references to some of Chand's actual figures, structures, and mosaics, with back-matter pages treating readers to photographs of the Rock Garden and of Chand himself. Pair with Rosenstock and Nivola's The Secret Kingdom (rev. 3/18).

Reviewer: Megan Dowd Lambert | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2021

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Katie Kath. Some junior rock collectors are budding geologists, interested in the origins and classification of rocks. Some have that completist gene and are hot on the quest for the perfect geode. Others just want to arrange their rocks into families, or learn to skip them, or use them for crafts. Author and illustrator of this joyful book give equal respect to every kind of rockhound, following a jaunty blue-haired girl with a sidelong grin who collects, sorts, paints, makes mosaics, pitches, and contemplates. Some of the similes are a bit clichéd ("People are like rocks. Some sparkle right away, while others seem ordinary at first, but have treasure deep inside"), but the energetic illustrations, with their mini-subplots (see the startled fish and grumpy raccoon), keep it all grounded and child centered. Gorgeous colorful endpapers introduce us to such delicious rock words as feldspar, banded gneiss, and actinolite. Up-to-date suggestions for further reading include both fiction and nonfiction. This offering joins such titles as Reid's Picture a Tree (rev. 5/13) and Tamaki's They Say Blue (rev. 7/18) in the category of appreciative musings about the natural world.

Reviewer: Sarah Ellis | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2021

(2) K-3 Translated by Lawrence Schimel. Illustrated by Miren Asiain Lora. "How did the oysters get up to the top of a mountain?" Nogués combines a geologist's eye, a teacher's cadence, and his own joy and wonder about the world to organize explanations of geologic time, fossil formation, stratigraphy, and mountain building into a puzzle to be solved. The superbly creative text takes the form of an interchange between narrator and learner, starting with a perceived anomaly--sea creatures at the highest point on land--and then moving through a series of questions, eliminating incorrect alternatives and reveling in eureka moments, to arrive at the logical conclusions formed by centuries of scientific thought. Readers immerse themselves in the "language of rocks," asked directly by Nogués (in ­­­first- and second-person narration) to observe objects within the gorgeous and varied sea-toned illustrations by Asiain Lora (Hello, Earth!, rev. 7/21); and they can use the child and adult figures present in all of the main illustrations to imagine themselves as geologists in the field. Sidebars throughout provide additional information about the scientific principles and discoveries, and a glossary is appended.

Reviewer: Danielle J. Ford | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2021

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Yao Xiao. With a voice that's distinctive, lyrical, and inspiring, teenage rock-climber Shiraishi narrates how she tackled--and solved--a climbing problem that "stretched into the sky. It was tremendously endless. It was bigger than thinking." In Xiao's earth-toned, digitally created illustration, an immense rockface looms over Shiraishi. Then, as the young climber comes up with a game plan, the depiction changes. Crisp, close-up vignettes zoom in on Shiraishi as she maneuvers through rocky areas that, to her, resemble a question mark, her father's bent elbow, and her mother's bolts of cloth. Xiao playfully adds visual interest by layering these mnemonic images over the sandstone rockface. Page after page, the strategies that Shiraishi shares--visually assessing the problem, breaking it down step by step, mapping it out in her head, taking a moment to regroup, incorporating what she learns from mistakes, and trying again and again--all apply to problem-solving in general. Equally applicable are the growth mindset, grit, and resilience she demonstrates, as well as the ownership she takes: "I am Ashima. What I do is climb. What I do is solve problems, which is to say, I make them mine." It's a potent message for all readers. A timeline highlighting the teen's achievements thus far cleverly climbs upward across its double-page spread, and eye-catching endpapers show Shiraishi in different rock-climbing--and problem-solving--positions.

Reviewer: Tanya D. Auger | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2020

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Louis Thomas. When a cold wind starts blowing in the mountains, a (nearsighted) man named Silli sets out to round up some sheep, hoping to gather wool for a sweater. The boulderlike "sheep" he finds are immovable, however, so Silli carries them down the mountain ("They were very heavy"). Problems (and clues) ensue--"Their wool was as hard as stone"--but Silli improvises and finds a way to work with what he's got. The deadpan text is accompanied by illustrations that show how silly Silli's predicament is.

Reviewer: Kitty Flynn

(3) K-3 Translated by Kathryn Bishop. Illustrated by Eve Tharlet. Tiny elf-like Oli finds a large blue stone. The forest creatures tease him for keeping it, but Oli says: "I'm sure I will find a use for it one day." And in fact, he eventually meets a distraught child whose doll is missing an eye. The dreamy illustrations, in which perspective is skewed and emotions are stronger than reality, suit the text’s sense of longing.

Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Daniel Egnéus. Lubna befriends a pebble when she and her father arrive at a refugee settlement, telling it about her family, the war, and her prior home. When Daddy finds them a new home, Lubna gives Pebble to newcomer Amir. Meddour's short, simple sentences pack a punch; the cool-palette illustrations, with their frequent use of curved lines, offer a sense of security. This tender story honors the emotional resilience of young people.

Reviewer: Julie Danielson | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2019

(3) K-3 Caveman Dave thinks his rock is better than caveman Jon's: "Dave's rock bigger"; one throw later, he realizes that "Jon's rock faster." Their rivalry builds until they find a creative way to defuse it. The blunt art serves the prehistoric milieu, and the book's humor--the protagonists' immaturity, their caveman-speak--illuminates the stupidity of fighting over small (albeit heavy) things.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(2) K-3 This is a companion to Caldecott Honor Book They All Saw a Cat. Over the years, a large stone's qualities appear to change depending on who interacts with it (rough to a slug, smooth to a hedgehog), reminding readers that our perspectives shape how we see things. Wenzel's textured illustrations include pops of color on earth-toned spreads; light and shadow are used to dramatic effect. A thought-provoking meditation on memory and the passage of time.

Reviewer: Julie Danielson | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2019

(4) K-3 Super Simple Earth Investigations series. After a brief introduction to each earth science topic, readers are provided with instructions for activities that demonstrate the concepts. The activities vary in quality: some capture the science well and prompt good questions, others are merely art projects with few connections to the underlying science. Photographs of children engaged in each step of the activities are helpful. A quiz is included. Glos. Review covers these Super Simple Earth Investigations titles: Super Simple Earthquake Projects, Super Simple Fossil Projects, Super Simple Mineral Projects, Super Simple Rock Cycle Projects, Super Simple Volcano Projects, and Super Simple Weather Projects.

Reviewer: Danielle J. Ford

(2) K-3 In this circular, layered wordless tale about loss and the cycle of life, a girl buries a beloved dog, then throws a rock into the ocean. Viewers are then swept back in time, witnessing a meteor strike. Through centuries, the meteorite becomes progressively smaller until the girl picks it up to throw. Becker uses gold to identify the meteorite's iterations in sumptuous, cinematic spreads.

Reviewer: Julie Danielson | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2018

(3) K-3 A rock is sure she's a mountain ("Nothing can move me... Everyone comes to me") until she finds herself tossed into a bird's nest, thrown into a pond, and finally tucked into a girl's pocket. This amenable tale of adaptiveness ("Whatever I become, I'm bound to be amazing!") gets its message across with art that gives its inanimate protagonist the unexpected: personality.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(4) K-3 Our Extreme Earth series. These small-trim books for very young readers present basic introductions to earth science topics. A sentence or two on each page defines processes or materials, with emphasis on key vocabulary words. Colorful (uncaptioned) photographs are fairly well matched to the accompanying text. Each book ends with an image and brief profile of a scientist from the related field and a question for further thought. Glos. Review covers these SandCastle: Our Extreme Earth titles: Earthquakes, Fossils, Minerals, The Rock Cycle, Weather, and Volcanoes.

Reviewer: Danielle J. Ford

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Patrick Benson. Eliza finds a stone on the beach and decides it's an egg. One morning she wakes up to see, in place of the "egg," a stone bird. Seasons pass, and a small stone appears next to her bird; later, that stone is replaced by a stone chick. McCartney captures in uncomplicated prose the unwavering faith and abundant imagination of children. Benson's richly detailed illustrations radiate warmth.

Reviewer: Julie Danielson | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2018

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Jean Claverie. "Here I am, facing the rock." Every summer, the African American narrator's older brother jumps off a tall rock into the lake; this year, big brother says it's the narrator's turn. Nadon nails an older sibling's aura: intimidating ("He always made everything look so easy") and inspiring (the boy follows his brother's example). The art's sketch-like quality suits the narrator's shaky-giddy mood.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(4) K-3 Earth Detectives series. Olson's cursory introductions to different earth-science disciplines first define each field, then shift to discussions of the scientific research and methods used. One famous historical scientist is always profiled, then the laboratory and field work of today's practitioners are described; accompanying photographs feature the landforms and earth materials discussed plus important scientific tools. Back matter offers career advice and tests readers' comprehension. Glos. Review covers these Earth Detectives titles: Exploring Earthquakes, Exploring Fossils, Exploring Minerals, Exploring the Rock Cycle, Exploring Volcanoes, and Exploring Weather.

Reviewer: Danielle J. Ford