A ROCK IS LIVELY- Diana Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long

Our fourth grade science curriculum includes a geology unit called "Our Changing Earth." Yesterday, I found a book that I wish I would have had when I taught that unit last year. A ROCK IS LIVELY, by Dianna Hutts Aston and Sylvia Long, is part of a series that also includes A SEED IS SLEEPY, A BUTTERFLY IS PATIENT, and AN EGG IS QUIET. Not sure how I could have missed these books (I even went back to look through my history of posts, just in case I had reviewed an earlier book, then forgotten about it), but now that I've discovered them, I'm definitely going to look for the rest of the series.

Each two-page spread is a kind of self-contained unit. There is one sentence, almost a heading, done in a large cursive font. e.g. " A rock is galactic." After that, there are two or three paragraphs of related information; on the galactic page there are three paragraphs- one about meteroids, one about comets, and one about asteroids. The book covers a variety of topics, including rock formation, how people use rocks, and even cave paintings. The book circles around, and ends where it began, with "A rock is lively."

I could see using this book in a lot of different ways. Obviously, the content would be terrific for a elementary grade science unit on geology. What intrigued me even more, however, was the book's potential as a mentor text for students' science journals.Sylvia Long's glorious,  detailed illustrations make A ROCK IS LIVELY a perfect mentor text. The end pages alone, which include a zillion different kinds of rocks in the front, then the same rocks, but with labels in the back,  are worth the price of the book.

Add this series to your science collection!