Se7en Review: A Box of Rocks… Rock Collecting 101 for Kids…

I know I don’t usually post a book review on a Friday night, but this so follows on from yesterday’s post: How to Turn a Collection into a Museum, that it actually has to go here…

Our love for the great outdoors and certain folks’ predeliction for collecting meant that this book ticked all the boxes. Box of Rocks by Nick Norman is published by Random House South Africa. The book begins with an introduction to rocks in general: igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic… followed by a closer look at twelve commonly found rocks.

1. It is simple enough for kids (and their mother person) to understand. It is not one of those books written for adults and dumbed down for kids. It is readable in bite size chunks and not overwhelming at all.
2. Each type of rock gets its own double page spread with information about it’s appearance, interesting facts about the rock, and where you can find it locally, in South Africa.
   

3. It is so good to have a natural factual book written in the local context… so many of our nature books we use for school are written for the overseas market… it is good to have something our kids can relate too.
4. That being said, kids the world over will love this book because it has a detailed instructions on how to make your own rock collection.

5. There are fabulous photographs throughout the book… close ups and details, so that when you are out and about you will be able to identify rocks for yourself.

6. There is a whole section on fossils, how they were formed and where to find them… photographs of the process.

7. Not to mention there is a list of great rock features found throughout Southern Africa… so should you happen to visit a rocky feature, like Table Mountain or Victoria Falls, then you can read up on it yourself.

And the se7en + 1th…

8. This is about our favourite science for school this year and a great addition to our collection of nature books that are left lying about to inspire little nature lovers to go out doors and observe close up the things they normally jump about on.

We would like to thank Penguin Random House South Africa for a copy of this book. This is not a sponsored post, the book was given to us for review purposes and the opinions expressed were as usual our own.