The Pebble in my Pocket: A History of Our Earth - Hardcover

Hooper, Meredith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670862592 ISBN 13: 9780670862597

Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers, 1996

Synopsis

A pebble doesn't look like much--until you know where it's been

A fascinating history of the earth takes readers on a scientific adventure through time and across the globe, all by following a single pebble over millions of years. A lively text and striking illustrations provide a revelatory account of the planet's dramatic formation.

About this title

About the Author

Meredith Hooper is a highly acclaimed, award-winning science writer. She lives in England.

Reviews

Grade 2-4?A child muses about the long history of a pebble, from its volcanic origins when the Earth was young to the day she picks it up off the ground. The conceit doesn't quite work, as the narrator sounds like an adult lecturer?"Two great landmasses, like giant plates, are colliding...It is 395 million years ago."?but the idea of using some common object or artifact as a springboard to the past is a tried-and-true one. Coady places an array of familiar, dramatically rendered dinosaurs and other flora and fauna in landscapes characteristic of each passing era. A timeline at the end includes labels for animals not previously named. More conventionally scientific than George Ella Lyon's Who Came Down That Road? (Orchard, 1992), this title makes an appealing alternative or replacement for Bruce Hiscock's The Big Rock (Atheneum, 1988).?John Peters, New York Public Library
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Hooper and Coady pass on a sense of wonder for the history contained in one small pebble in an outstanding picture-book overview of 480 million years. The narrator, a young girl, holds a small pebble up and asks a simple question: ``Where did you come from, pebble?'' The book flashes back to the ``beginning'' of earth history, a dramatic spread of red hot volcanoes on the earth's crust spewing forth fire and rocks. One page and 85 million years later, the earth's surface is beginning to rise and buckle, rain and snow cause cracks in the rocks, and the first living things appear on the land. Seas rise and fall, fish give way to giant amphibians, amphibians give way to dinosaurs, then furry rodents, mammoths, early man, saber-toothed tigers, farms, houses, and modern times. The text never loses track of the pebble, worn smooth by rain and wind, packed into a new layer of rock forming under the sea, pushed up into mountains as the earth tilts and folds, and carried by glaciers to the field where the girl finds it. The final page offers a chronology with charts. A note makes clear that species are not drawn to scale, and other licenses taken. Coady provides spectacular paintings, given texture, weight, and movement by the strokes of his brush. (Nonfiction. 7-12) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Gr. 3^-5. A girl finds a pebble on the ground and asks, "Where did you come from, pebble?" The answer unfolds through words and pictures. The first double-page spread shows volcanoes erupting 480 million years ago, bringing molten rock to the surface of the earth; the next illustrates land masses colliding and buckling into mountains 395 million years ago. Page by page, the story goes forward in time, tracing one pebble's history as the face of the earth changes, animals become more complex, and finally a little girl picks up the pebble, "a little piece of the history of our planet." The last two pages feature geological and biological timelines laying out the periods dramatized in the story. Rich with color and shading, the paintings dramatize Earth's history. Considering the vastness of the topic, the text does a good job of balancing the general with the specific. Teachers will find this a good introduction to geology. Carolyn Phelan

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670862592
• ISBN 13: 9780670862597
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Coady Christopher
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 48