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NATURE IS A SCULPTOR by Heather Ferranti Kinser

NATURE IS A SCULPTOR

Weathering and Erosion

by Heather Ferranti Kinser

Pub Date: Sept. 5th, 2023
ISBN: 9781728477190
Publisher: Millbrook/Lerner

Admire nature’s awesome artistry.

The author of a book of microscopic images—Small Matters (2020)—turns to nature on a much larger scale here. Combining stunning stock photographs with rhythmic, poetic lines, Kinser has created a work that will have readers and listeners eager to travel to national parks and protected areas around the world. She shows and tells how—through weathering, erosion, and deposition—water, ice, and wind create amazing natural features such as Half Dome in Yosemite National Park, California, and a hoodoo in Goblin Valley State Park, Utah. Further afield, she includes photographs of Split Apple Rock, just offshore in New Zealand, and amazing rock striations created by the Russell Glacier in Greenland. The verse contains rhymes and a pleasing repetition of vowel sounds; the rhythm is steady and inexorable—appropriate to the long-term processes it describes. The language is filled with active verbs (“etches, scrapes, and carves,” “shapes and shaves”) and apt figurative language—ice is compared to a “grinder,” and a windstorm is referred to as a “rugged file.” Through both words and images, Kinser makes unfamiliar formation names like tafone easy to understand. The backmatter includes more detail about processes as well as a glossary. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

An impressive STEM read-aloud.

(further reading, websites) (Informational picture book. 5-9)