The Rock - Hardcover

Birchmore, Daniel A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1887813039 ISBN 13: 9781887813037

Publisher: Cucumber Island Storytellers, 1996

Synopsis

Etched by the wind, chiseled by the sea, rising and falling with the Earth, a rock stands solid through the millennia

About this title

From School Library Journal

Grade 2-7. This brief story works better on a metaphorical level than a physical one?though even the former, with its vaguely Buddhist cast, is oblique. One day, long before the advent of living things, a happy boulder pops out of a hillside. As mountains wear down around it, oceans rise above it, sediments cover it and then erode away, as plants, then animals, people, and finally the ocean again surround it, both its shape and its equanimity remain unchanged. That's it. The incantatory text?"And the sun warmed the rock by day, and the moon charmed it by night, and the rock was happy"?is paired with candy-colored, granular crayon drawings that feature a moon-faced rock beaming at a series of bright but hazy landscapes. Let adults winkle out the inner meaning here; for children, books like Bruce Hiscock's The Big Rock (Atheneum, 1988) or John Collier's Backyard (Dutton, 1996) convey the scale of geologic time more effectively.?John Peters, New York Public Library
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

In The Rock, young readers (preschool through 3rd grade) journey through time as a rock rises with the mountains, falls into the sea, shelters small creatures, and watches children play. Etched by the wind, chiselled by the sea, a rock remains steadfast through the millennia as the forces of nature and humanity reshape the landscape around it. Children (and adults!) will identify with this philosophical, yet happy rock as it enjoys adapting to ever-changing surroundings. Nancy Willis' wonderful crayon illustrations are perfectly in synch with Daniel Birchmore's engaging text. The Rock is an image-laden, informative and accurate story of the evolution of the earth and its inhabitants, cast in the form of an entertaining fiction. -- Midwest Book Review

Edition details

• Publisher: Cucumber Island Storytellers
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1887813039
• ISBN 13: 9781887813037
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 30
• Illustrator: Willis Nancy Carol