These Rocks Count!

by Alison Formento, Sarah Snow (Illustrator)

Overview

Mr. Tate's class is about to learn there's more to rocks than being dirty lumps on the ground. On this field trip they're visiting the rocky ridge mountains to learn about rocks. At first the children think rocks will be boring, but they soon learn that rocks are all around us in ways we might not expect—such as glass and toothpaste!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807578674
Publisher:	Whitman, Albert & Company
Publication date:	02/01/2014
Series:	These Things Count! Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	32
File size:	10 MB
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Alison Formento grew up in Arkansas and now lives in New Jersey with her family. She's climbed trees, camped under them, and planted some! Alison is also the author of These Bees Count! and These Rocks Count!

Sarah Snow is a collage artist who combines found papers, acrylics, and watercolors. She has also illustrated These Bees Count! and These Rocks Count! Sarah lives with her family in New York.

Editorial Reviews

"Formento and Snow continue their series of nature-meets-numbers books with a foray into geology. . . an information-rich afterword dives into details about rock types, their uses, notable rock formations, and the study of rocks and volcanoes." Publishers Weekly, January 31, 2014

From the Publisher

2013-12-11
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)

Kirkus Reviews