Scavenger Scout: Rock Hound

Written by Shelby Wilde

Illustrated by Yana Popova

Scout is an inquisitive seven-year-old explorer who became hooked on rock collecting when she found an orange rock in her backyard. She searches everywhere for rocks to add to her collection. In this tale, Scout crawls into a dragon’s den to find Azurite, she travels under the sea to extract Fluorite from the bottom of the ocean floor, and then zooms into outer space to grab Alexandrite floating around in one of Saturn’s rings. Finally, she explores a collector’s canyon out West to come across a treasure trove of crystals. Wilde describes different methods of removing the minerals and provides details about each type of mineral, its place on the Mohs scale, and the types of tools a geologist uses.

The illustrations are vibrant and seem to jump off the page. Scout is an adorable strong-female role model character. Rhymes are crisp, alliteration makes them fun to read out loud. I highly recommend this book to elementary grade children. This book combines a bit of fantasy, an adventure, and a nonfiction story about rocks with a cute narrator to entice readers to come along and learn with her.

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Planet Earth! A Kids Book About Planet Earth-Fun Facts & Pictures About Our Oceans, Mountains, Rivers,Deserts, Endangered Species & More

Written by Alexander G. Michaels

The title of this post is much shorter than the name of the book, but in fact the author provides a concise guide to all those things in an e book of less than fifty pages. Targeted for children in the early elementary grades and written in fairly simple language, this guide sets forth basic information combined with beautiful photographs. It can be a asset to the science section of the classroom as well as serve as a quick reference book or starting point for more research. The author might consider releasing a paper edition for libraries and print book lovers.

Michaels begins with the planet’s history, characteristics, composition, and place in solar system. He next outlines the geographic regions of land and water and gives details about well known examples. The section on fun facts is sure to be a favorite among children; it provides a vast compendium of information in sentence form. For example, each winter approximately one septillion snow crystals drop from the sky or that 75% of the earth’s animals could be extinct within the next three hundred years. Michaels concludes with some ideas on how we can preserve the planet for our descendants.

I have to admit that I learned quite a few things from this book. While I knew that most of the Earth’s surface is water, I was not aware that only 3% of the water on earth is fresh water. Did you know that the largest desert in the world is in Antarctica? Where can you find most of the Earth’s gold? How are mountains, volcanoes and rivers formed? There are lots of surprises for adults as well as the children who pick up this book.

Take a look at this beautiful guide to our planet and share it with your children. Michaels has written a whole series of books, including one on the solar system, endangered species, and dinosaurs. I plan on taking a look at those as well.

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