FOSSIL

The moving and graceful story of how a fossil comes to be. “I found a stone / that once was bone,” says a girl on a beach, leaning over the fossilized head of an ornithocheirus. Elegant, full-page watercolors sweep backward in time to follow several days in the life of this pterosaur as it fishes, sleeps, wakes, and feeds its young. The minimal text is as much poetry as information: “Strong bone, / skimming salty breeze, / scooping squid from teeming seas.” Ewart addresses the vastness of time between then and now when the ornithocheirus dies: “Still bone, / silent bone, living days done. / But millions of days are yet to come”—days of the bone being embraced by ocean-floor silt and then replaced by minerals as the nearby shoreline shows the earth evolving. Beautifully illustrated science with a philosophical flavor. (author’s note, bibliography) (Picture book. 4-7)