These Rocks Count!

February 3, 2014
Formento and Snow continue their series of nature-meets-numbers books with a foray into geology. Once again, Mr. Tate’s class is taking a field trip—this time, it’s to find rocks and learn their stories. “Listening” to a boulder reveals a counting narrative about rocks and minerals: “Three busy beetles chew on moss-covered stones. Four seaside mounds dry into table salt.” Snow’s inviting digital collages provide an easy entrance into the topic, though a grumpy student’s 180-degree turnaround (“ ‘Wow!’ said Amy. ‘There’s more to rocks than I thought’ ”) is a tad quick. For those who agree with classmate Eli that “Rocks rock,” an information-rich afterword dives into details about rock types, their uses, notable rock formations, and the study of rocks and volcanoes. Ages 4–7.

January 1, 2014
Mr. Tate's class disappoints their fans with this outing to Rocky Ridge Mountain and a look at the ways people use rocks. Ranger Pedra meets the students and introduces them to the notion that rocks have stories to tell. The class counts what they "hear" from a boulder: one sculptor, two cement trucks, three beetles, four oceanside mounds of drying salt, five baby turtles in the sand, six stalactites dripping water, seven gems, a sidewalk comprising eight pieces of slate, nine bricks and 10 panes of glass. Ranger Pedra goes on to mention the fact that rocks help date the world, and Mr. Tate asks for other ways rocks are used in everyday life. Snow's digital collages are well-suited to the subject matter, though the people seem more wooden and obviously digital than in previous entries. Overall, the team of Formento and Snow has not been able to capture the same winning combination of education and story as they did with their first, This Tree Counts! (2010). This latest has the same ambiguous-audience problem that plagued These Seas Count! (2013), the counting pages dumbing material down for the youngest listeners (failing to even introduce geology vocabulary; stalactites are called "cave spears") while the backmatter presents paragraphs of information for a significantly older audience. An uneven flow may also cause readers to lose interest midway. Those wishing to share the natural world with kids should begin with Ellen Stoll Walsh and then move on to works by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace. (Picture book. 4-7)

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March 1, 2014

K-Gr 3-Mr. Tate's class takes a ranger-led hike to explore the world of geology in this mediocre effort, which reads more like a series of disjointed facts about rocks than as a story. Ranger Pedra invites the children to "listen with our eyes and hands" to a boulder's story, and then, inexplicably, it "tells" a counting story. The items being counted, whether they are four mounds of salt, five turtle hatchlings moving over the sand, or ten panes of glass, are never explicitly connected to the rocks and have nothing to do with the boulder itself. Though the class discussion later touches briefly on the use of rocks and minerals in everyday products, the text fails to make critical connections. The bright, flat cartoon illustrations are appealing enough, and an afterword offers more background information on rocks, but overall the narrative fails to support its title.-Kathleen Kelly MacMillan, Carroll County Public Library, MD

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