PICTURE BOOK - Fossil - Bill Thomson

Illustrated by the author

2014 Two Lions (Amazon!) (I'm quite sure it said 2014 in the book, but Goodreads says it was published in November of 2013.

40 pgs.

Goodreads rating: 3.91

My rating: 4/Loved it

Endpapers: grey-green

Title Page: A wordless beginning to the story - the start of their walk

Illustrations: "Bill Thomson embraced traditional painting techniques and meticulously painted each illustration by hand, using acrylic paint and colored pencils.  His illustrations are not photographs or computer-generated images."

1^st line/s: None - it's completely wordless
Dedication:  "In loving remembrance of the students and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School"

My comments:  This wordless book is about a boy and his dog, out for a walk along the sandy shore of a lake or pond.  The fossil he discovers when he accidentally trips splits open to begin a series of events that are chronicled beautifully in pictures only.  The facial expressions of the boy AND his dog give the story incredible dimension. I only had one problem with the book.  Near the end of the it, he boy intentionally destroys fossils.  He does this (SPOILER!) to save his dog.  I have a really hard time with this...it makes total sense for the story, but I don't want the idea of destroying a fossil to ever be in an impressionable kid's mind. Other than that, the book was incredibly glorious.  What a beautiful pair this boy and dog are!

Goodreads:  When a boy and his dog go for a hike, the boy trips on a fossil, and it comes to life, revealing an ancient plant. The boy is so intrigued that he breaks two more fossils that come to life—a dragonfly and a pteranodon. When these prehistoric creatures collide with present reality, the boy must figure out a way to make things go back to normal. Visually told through art, this "wordless story" will surely spark imagination and creativity.

POETRY - Earthshake: Poems from the Ground Up - Lisa Westberg Peters

Illustrated by Cathie Felstead
2003, Greenwillow Books
HC $16.99
32 pages
Goodreads:  3.94
cag:  okay (art check +, poetry OK)

22 poems
Endpapers:  navy blue
Title page:  Light blue watercolor, 3/4 inch border, collage map globe, lots of colors
Auxiliary:  end notes give information about concepts covered in each of the poems
Author:  loves geology, lives with family in St. Paul, MN
Illustrator:  A resident of Hertfordshire,England, where she lives with her husband, 2 kids, and 6 cats.

I particularly liked these poems and will use them within my geology/rocks & minerals unit:

Recipe for Granite

Melt a chunk of continent.

Heat at a million degrees,
long enough for the world
to spin a trillion times,
long enough for the Milky Way
to make it partway to infinity.

Cool
slowly enough for crystals
to form like pink and white stars,
slowly enough for the dinosaurs
to go extinct.

Makes one mountain range.
Serves a whole entry.
Enjoy!

QuartzQuartzQuartz

We are surrounded

by quartz.  It’s in the

crystals of our watches, It’s

in the flint of our arrowheads, it’s

in purple amethysts, it’s in the sand of

our beaches and our sandpaper, it’s in the

granite of George Washington’s chin and

Crazy Horses’s nose in South Dakota, it’s

in the concrete of our sidewalks

and in the white pebbles we

throw on them when we

play hopscotch.

50. Death Assemblage - Susan Cummins Miller

Frankie MacFarlane #1
Texas Tech Univ. Press, 2002
Rating: 3.5

Set in Pair-a-Dice, Nevada, a tiny "hick" town in the northern part of the state, our heroine, six-footer Frankie MacFarlane, is working on her graduate thesis in geology and smarting over a broken romance. She has nine lives, a huge curiosity, and is very nosy. There's a huge cast of characters, murders, break-ins, strangers, and an inordinate amount of clues that DO come together at the end. It's improbable, interesting, and a fun read. The suicide? accident? murder? of her ex sets up a future novel...

It's not a "polished" story - many clues and much information are introduced weakly, but it's the first in a series (even possibly her first book?) and it will be interesting to see if character development is better in future novels.