About the Holiday

Do you love rocks? Are your eyes captured by the colors and patterns on the stones you see while out walking? Today’s holiday celebrates these wonders of nature and encourages geologists—both professionals and amateurs—to indulge their passion and maybe even teach others about the history and formation of rocks. To celebrate, take a walk in your area or even in your own backyard, pick up a few rocks, and research a little more about them.

A Rock is Lively

Written by Dianna Hutts Aston | Illustrated by Sylvia Long

 

Open the cover of A Rock is Lively and before the text—even before the title—readers are treated to an array of fifty-one gemstones that dazzle the eyes. How enticing to learn about all of these natural works of art! “A rock is lively…” the text begins, arching over a shining piece of snowflake obsidian—an ebony-colored rock dotted with lacy blots. These lively rocks bubble “like a pot of soup deep beneath the earth’s crust…liquid…molten…boiling.” How hot does it need to be to melt a rock? Anywhere “between 1,300 and 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit (700 and 1,300 degrees Celsius).”

What happens at these temperatures? Well, like your favorite cookie recipe, “a rock is mixed up. All rocks are made of a mix of ingredients called minerals.” Take the recipe for Lapis Lazuli, for instance: “Mix the mineral lazurite with a dash of sodalite and a pinch of both calcite and pyrite. Heat within the earth until a brilliant blue.”

Rocks don’t exist just here on earth. Rocks are also galactic. “Outer space is a shower of rocky fireworks” made of meteoroids, comets, and asteroids. You’ll learn the differences among them here too. You probably already know that rocks are old, but how old? Billions of years old! “The oldest rocks ever found are nearly 4.5 billion years old.” Rocks are “huge…and tiny.” They are as big as a mountain reaching for the sky and as small as the grains underneath your feet.

“A rock is helpful.” Animals use rocks in many amazing ways. Some birds swallow stones to help with digestion, and some sea creatures ingest them to help keep them balanced in the water. Other animals use rocks to crack open shellfish and nuts so they can get to the goodness inside. Some rocks look plain on the outside but hold a beautiful surprise inside. Some rocks are full of colorful rainbows, others look like a starry night sky, while still others look like a white chrysanthemum or a red-and-green watermelon.

From humans’ earliest days rocks have been chiseled into arrow heads and spear points, axe blades, and hammers. They’ve become mortars and pestles and are ground up today to “make cement and bricks, paper and pencils, glass, and toothpaste.” But rocks aren’t only useful, they’re creative too. Ancient peoples made paints from minerals and created colorful “pictographs on cave walls, rock shelters, and ledges.” Petroglyphs were made by chipping and pecking away at rock surfaces. As civilizations developed, so did their buildings and artwork made from stone. The pyramids were made from limestone, Stonehenge is formed from “sandstone, dolerite, and others,” the Taj Mahal and Michelangelo’s “David” are marble marvels, and Mt. Rushmore was carved from Granite.

“A rock is recycled.” Formed in three different ways, rocks are categorized as sedimentary, metamorphic, or igneous. “Over thousands of millions of years, [a rock] changes from one form to another. This is called the rock cycle,” and it keeps rocks very lively!

Dianna Hutts Aston’s inventively and conversationally accessible discussion of the rocks that make up our earth and universe will enthrall any rock hound or entice the curious. Aston’s lead-in heads make for clear classification of and intriguing introductions to the various types of rocks, how they’re formed, what they look like, and how they’ve been used through history.  Her pages contain short, but very informative paragraphs that teach children about rocks through time and size comparisons they’ll understand, descriptions with familiar references, and evocative verbs and adjectives. Aston’s dynamic look at this subject will excite kids to learn more.

Accompanying Aston’s text are Sylvia Long’s stunning illustrations that open readers eyes to the incredible beauty of each type of rock. To begin, young readers see a cut away of the rock layers beneath earth’s crust as well as the rocks that shoot across the sky. Aston shows animals using rocks in a myriad of ways as well as the tools, art, and buildings created by humans throughout history. The showstoppers are her depictions of the interior of different types of geodes, with their electric blues, reds, purples, and oranges and figures that lend the rocks their names. The double-spread pages containing fifty-one rocks with their name that introduce and end the book are a young geologist’s dream come true and will send them scurrying to discover and collect them all.

A fantastic reference, A Rock is Lively makes a terrific addition to home and classroom libraries  or a gift (pair it with a geode or small boxed rock collection) for young nature lovers and scientists.

Ages 7 – 12

Chronicle Books, 2012 (Hardcover; 2015 Paperback) | ISBN 978-1452106458

Discover more about Dianna Hutts Aston and her books on her website.

To learn more about Sylvia Long, her books, and her art, visit her website.

Old Rock Day Activity

Rock This Craft!

 

Smooth stones can give you a natural canvas for your creativity! With a little bit of paint, pins or magnets, and some imagination, you can make refrigerator magnets, jewelry, paper weights, and more!

Supplies

• Smooth stones in various sizes
• Paint or markers
• Small magnets, available at craft stores
• Jewelry pins, available at craft stores
• Paint brush
• Strong glue

Directions

To make magnets

1. Design and paint an image on the stone
2. Attach a magnet to the back with strong glue, let dry
3. Use to hang pictures, notes, or other bits of important stuff on your refrigerator or magnetic board

To make jewelry

1. Using a smaller, flatter stone, design and paint an image on the stone
2. Attach a jewelry pin to the back with the strong glue, let dry
3. Wear your pin proudly

To make a paper weight

1. Using a large stone, design and paint an image on the stone
2. Let dry
3. Display and use on your desk to keep those papers in place

You can find A Rock is Lively at these booksellers

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million | IndieBound

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