Book Review

A young girl holds in front of her eyes the smooth brown warm pebble she has picked up from the ground, already engaged with her find. Twenty pages later, she puts it down in a green field amid yellow flowers, the subsoil section visible below, filled with pebbles. ...
Each page bears a landscape and a dozen lines of text, a dramatic tale of fiery volcanoes and of mountains rising slowly, slowly, as time and the weather sculpt pebbles out of the substance of the hills themselves. ...

The gravity and dignity of the epic come across, relieved by the intimacy of a pebble, a gift from writer and painter both.

~ Philip amd Phylis Morrison, Scientific American exerpt

This book is the story of the journey of a small, round, brown pebble from its origin in a volcano 480 million years ago, to its shaping through erosion and transport long distances by water and glacial ice, its incorporation into sedimentary rock which later eroded, until it was finally found by a girl.

The extraordinary history of an ordinary thing will intrigue children. The illustrations provide a great sense of energy, movement and change.

Meredith Hoover's book is inviting and up-to-date. Perhaps, given the intended age level (elementary school age children), it is a little too wordy. The story of the process is somewhat obscured by a few too many facts that probably won’t be absorbed. I recommend it as a good read that should remain a Cornerstone Nominee.

~ K.K., MLS, Brunswick