Posted on by TracyC

The Bodies in the Bessledorf Hotel

The Bodies in the Bessledorf Hotel by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, 1986.

Officer Feeney is the first person who suggests that, someday, there might be a dead body at the Bessledorf Hotel. The hotel is coincidentally located next to the local funeral parlor, which is why the subject of dead bodies comes up, and Officer Feeney has a way of suggesting frightening things that scare Bernie Magruder, son of the hotel’s manager. Officer Feeney’s reasoning is that most people die in bed, so it only makes sense that some of them would be hotel beds. The hotel has 30 rooms, and with people coming and going, it’s surely just a matter of time before a guest dies there. It’s a morbid thought, although Bernie reasons that Officer Feeney is overestimating the number of people who pass through the hotel because it isn’t always full and some of the guests are long-term residents.

Still, Bernie gets a shock after he returns to the hotel, and the cleaning lady, Hildegarde bursts in on him and his parents, hysterical about finding a body in a bathtub of Room 107 with all his clothes on. Bernie’s father tells his wife to call Officer Feeney to write a report of the death and considers whether they can remove the body secretly, perhaps in a laundry cart, to avoid bad publicity for the hotel. Unfortunately, some of their guests already heard Hildegarde screaming about a dead body, so word is out. They want to know if it’s a case of murder or suicide and how it’s being investigated, and one of the long-term guests, who is a poet, has already written a short poem for the occasion.

However, by the time they all get to the room where Hildegarde saw the body, it’s gone. There is nothing in the bathtub, not even water. Officer Feeney shows up and demands to know what’s going on, and Hildegarde insists that she really saw something. The Magruders believe her, but they have no explanation for where the body could have gone. The guests speculate about body-snatchers and ghosts.

All they know about the man who occupied that room is that he gave his name as Phillip A. Gusset, he checked in the evening before, and he said that he would be leaving the next morning. Officer Feeney asks them if there was anything odd about him, like if he seemed nervous or unwell. Nobody remembers anything like that. They remember that he had a mustache and a hat with a red feather and just a single bag with him. He did kind of make Bernie’s parents uneasy, and he seemed to have a strange scent about him, although they find it difficult to describe what it actually smelled like. Officer Feeney says that, without a body or any evidence that something has happened, there doesn’t seem like anything to investigate. Bernie’s father is relieved that there won’t be any report of a murder or death occurring at the hotel because, otherwise, the owner might fire him. Bernie remembers that the man’s slippers were still in the room and goes to get them in case they’re evidence. When he gets there, he discovers that the slippers have mysteriously disappeared.

Bernie’s friends, Weasel and Georgene, think that people will probably never want to rent that hotel room ever again, and Bernie’s father renumbers the rooms so there will be no Room 107. Weasel convinces Bernie and Georgene to help him search the area for the body, thinking that whoever took it would most likely want to dispose of it quickly. They search down by the river, but they only find a bag of garbage that Bernie’s younger brother, Lester, left there to trick them.

Even though there’s no evidence that anything happened and the police aren’t investigating the situation, the incident of the disappearing guest appears in a newspaper in Indianapolis, where the hotel owner, Mr. Fairchild, lives. Mr. Fairchild calls the hotel to demand to know what’s going on. Mr. Fairchild says that he want the hotel to put on live entertainment in the evening on weekends to draw attention away from the incident and bring people in. However, he expects Bernie’s father to hire the entertainment out of his own money since Mr. Fairchild thinks this situation is his fault, and most entertainment is out of the Magruders’ price range. Fortunately, Bernie’s father has joined a barbershop quartet, so his group can do their singing at the hotel.

The singing goes well, but a strange woman with orange hair checks into the hotel and keeps making comments about dead bodies there. Then, one of the waiters finds this woman dead in her room, Room 321. Just like the first body, this body also vanishes. By this time, Bernie’s father suspects that the woman faked her “death” just to scare the waiter and ran away as soon as he was gone. As Bernie’s parents investigate the room, they notice an odd smell that reminds them of the first guest who disappeared. The smell really unnerves his father, but strangely, not his mother. It’s a faint smell that’s difficult to identify, but it conjures different images for both of them. Bernie’s father says it reminds him of sweaty clothes, cigars, and pastrami, while his mother says it makes her think of flowers and a porch swing in the evening.

The Magruders aren’t sure why someone wants to fake deaths at the hotel, but this latest faker didn’t pay for either her room or dinner, and somehow, the newspaper has heard about it and reported it again. Mr. Fairchild is angry, and Bernie knows that they need to figure out who the prankster is before they do it again!

The book is part of the Bessledorf mystery series, also known as the Bernie Magruder series. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction

Attempts to investigate the mystery alternate with the Magruders’ attempts at cheap hotel entertainment. The barbershop quartet works until one of the members gets laryngitis. Some of the guests start a food fight when the entertainment is bad. Then, Joseph gets some of his friends from the veterinary college who play instruments to come. Personally, I like the part where Lester suggests that they hold a haunted house at the hotel and take people on tours of the rooms where “dead” bodies have been found. They reject that idea, but there are hotels and bed-and-breakfasts that give haunted tours, and people come to investigate ghosts. That actually can be a successful gimmick. I once intentionally stayed in a supposedly haunted hospital that had been turned into a hotel in an old western mining town. A possible murder once occurred there, but I enjoyed the visit.

When a new guest shows up at the hotel with that same, strange scent, Bernie knows that it’s their culprit, back again in another disguise. Now that he knows who to watch, he starts planning how they’re going to trap the person.

I had a couple of ideas in beginning about who was doing all of this and why, but there are some surprising twists in the story. Bernie’s first attempt to catch the villain is weirdly thwarted by the discovery of a dead body that is actually a real, dead person. It’s not a guest; it’s a body stolen from the funeral parlor next door. The bad guy decided to change his tactics.

One of the clues to the person’s identity is that mysterious smell and the way it has an opposite effect on Bernie’s parents. It irritates Bernie’s father but makes his mother feel strangely nostalgic. The truth is that they’re both remembering the same thing or the same person, but although they can’t remember right away exactly what they’re remembering, they have very different feelings about it.

Surprisingly, although Mr. Fairchild threatens to replace Mr. Magruder with another manager, he actually shows up at the hotel himself and discovers that he likes playing detective and figuring out what’s going on. He’s also impressed with the way Mr. Magruder stayed to finish managing things even after he told him that he was planning to hire someone to replace him, and that secures the family’s position.

Posted on by TracyC

Eyewitness Medieval Life

Eyewitness

Medieval Life by Andrew Langley, photographed by Geoff Brightling and Geoff Dann, 1988, 2004.

I love books that explain the details of daily life in the past, and I especially like Eyewitness books because they include such great photographs to show objects that people would have used in the past.

This book begins by explaining the time period of the “Middle Ages”, which was the period between Ancient Greece and Rome and the Renaissance, when culture and knowledge from Ancient Greece and Rome came back into vogue. The Middle Ages lasted about 1000 years, roughly from 400 to about 1540 AD. (Estimates of the start and end dates vary because this was a period defined by cultural changes, which are gradual and don’t have precise start and end dates.) This long period of time can also be divided into smaller periods and contained many important events that helped to shape society and culture, including The Crusades and The Great Plague.

Medieval society was hierarchical and was based on land ownership. The king and the highest nobles controlled the land and allowed people in lower levels of society to use it or grant farming rights to peasants in exchange for rent in the form of their services and a share of what they produced. The peasants or serfs were tied to the land they farmed, and the land was owned by the lords they served. They were not regarded as “free” people, and they couldn’t leave their lord or the land except by raising enough money to buy some land for themselves or by marrying a free person from a higher level of society.

A lord’s manor included not only his manor house or castle but the nearby village, church, and the farmland where his serfs worked. Often, villages and manors had little contact with the outside world, so the people who lived there had to make most of what they needed themselves. Most people never left their land or were only able to travel a short distance from it, so the only new people they might meet would be traveling peddlers, soldiers, or pilgrims.

The book explains what would be found in a typical Medieval home. Poor people lived in houses that had only one or two rooms for the entire family. Few people could afford to buy glass windows. Poor people only had wooden shutters to cover their windows. Others might have tallow-coated linen over a lattice frame, which would let in light, and some wealthier people had pieces of polished horn in their windows, which also let in light, although you couldn’t really see through them well. What people ate varied depending on their social status. Wealthier people could afford a wider variety of foods, and poor people mostly ate what they produced themselves.

Women’s lives also varied depending on their social status. Pleasant women farmed and provided for their families alongside their husbands. Women in families of craftsmen and tradesmen often worked alongside the men in the family business. Wealthy women managed their husbands’ households or could rise to rank of influential abbess if they joined religious orders. However, the highest ranks in society were occupied by men.

While peasants served their lords, lords also owed services to higher nobles and, ultimately, to the king, although sometimes the king struggled to control powerful nobles and assert his authority over them. The king generally had to keep his nobles satisfied with his rule if he wanted to retain their loyalty because, while he was the source of their land and authority, they were effectively ruling over their own smaller lands with their own troops. While nobles owed their king military service and support, if they were dissatisfied with the state of their lands or were just unoccupied with other battles to fight and saw an opportunity, they would sometimes use their troops to raid the lands of neighboring nobles. Part of the king’s job involved preventing his nobles from being dangers to him and to each other. The king also made and enforced laws, settled disputes, and oversaw the collection of taxes.

Christianity, specifically in the form of Catholicism, was central to the lives of people in the Middle Ages. During this time, stonemasons and craftsmen developed new techniques for building impressive cathedrals that still stand today. These cathedrals were lavishly decorated with statues, frescoes, and stained glass windows that depicted Biblical stories and the lives of saints. These works of art were important for helping to teach people who did not have the ability to read the Bible themselves about their religion.

Religious orders of monks and nuns performed important functions for society, such as caring for people who were poor or sick, providing safe places for travelers to stay, and copying written texts by hand. In the centuries before the printing press was invented, there were only handwritten books, and they took time and skill to produce. It could take an entire year for someone to copy an entire Bible. Few people were able to own personal books, and much of the schooling in this period was provided by religious orders.

The book describes the rise of Islam during the early Middle Ages, increases in trade and commerce, the growth of towns, and guilds that controlled different professions. It also describes Medieval music and entertainment, such as plays and parades. One of my favorite parts of the book is about fairs and feast days.

The book ends by describing the beginning of the Renaissance and the rediscovery of classical Greek and Roman culture as well as the beginning of the Reformation and the development of new scientific discoveries and artistic styles.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

Posted on by TracyC

The Olympians

The Olympians by Leonard Everett Fisher, 1984.

This picture book was my very first introduction to mythology when I was a kid! The book presents profiles of twelve Greek/Roman gods and goddesses. The Ancient Greeks and Romans worshiped the same gods and goddesses, but they used different names for them. At the beginning of the book, there is a list of gods and goddesses that gives both their Greek and Roman names. However, the rest of the book mainly uses the Greek names because the emphasis is on Greece. The gods and goddesses were called the Olympians because their legends state that they lived on Mount Olympus in Greece. It’s useful to know the Roman names, though, because the planets in our solar system were given the Roman names of gods.

The back of the book has a family tree because all of the gods and goddesses were canonically related to each other. As a kid, I just accepted that. I don’t remember questioning it. The names of the gods and goddesses in the book are written in white.

Each god and goddess in the book has a page of information and a full-page, full-color picture. Their profiles explain their personalities, their roles among the gods, and symbols that are commonly associated with them.

The pictures in the book are colorful. Although the faces of the gods and goddesses have a somewhat chiseled appearance, I like them.

When I was a kid, I think I had a fascination for Artemis and Apollo because they were twins, and I found twins fascinating. Because I was a girl, I generally liked the female goddesses better than the male ones. I think I sometimes tried to imagine which one I would be if I could pick one. I think, for a time, I liked Athena because she was the goddess of wisdom and was represented by owls, and I also happen to like owls.

As I was rereading the book this time, I became more interested in the page about the goddess Hestia. As the goddess of the hearth and home, she might not seem as exciting and well-known as the others, but I like her picture, and her profile has some interesting facts. It mentions that Ancient Greeks would carry live coals from an old city to a new one that had been recently built in her honor.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

Posted on by TracyC

Norse Myths and Legends

Usborne Illustrated Guide to Norse Myths and Legends by Cheryl Evans and Anne Millard, illustrated by Rodney Matthews, 1986.

I like this book because, before it begins telling the myths and legends, it first gives an introduction to the history, territory, and religion of the Norsemen. By “Norsemen“, the book means not only people living in Norway but Scandinavians and people of Scandinavian descent speaking related languages and living in various areas across Europe. The Norsemen include, but are not limited to, the Vikings, who were specifically seafaring traders, mercenaries, and pirates/looters as opposed to farmers and fishermen.

There is still much about the history of the ancient Norsemen that we don’t know because, for much of their history, they did not have their own system of writing and relied on oral stories for passing down historical and cultural knowledge. The Norse myths were originally oral stories before they were written down. The introduction also explains that there is one myth in the book, the story of Sigurd and the Nibelungs, that was originally a German legend but was later adopted by Scandinavians.

Norse mythology is somewhat unusual because, while Norsemen were polytheistic, like other ancient groups, and their gods and goddesses had human emotions and relationships, like the gods and goddesses in Greek and Roman mythology, Norse gods were not immortal. Norse gods could be killed, like human beings, which meant that any risks they took had genuinely serious stakes for them. In fact, the legends predict that, at a future, world-ending event known as Ragnarok, most of the gods will be killed.

Although this particular book doesn’t mention it, the qualities of Norse gods being able to perform incredible deeds while still being mortal makes them rather like our modern concept of a superhero. Thor and Loki were both made into comic book characters by the time this book was written, and characters and events in Norse mythology have helped to form the 21st century Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In Norse mythology, the gods and goddesses lived in a multilevel universe made up of nine lands or “worlds.” The highest level of their universe contained Asgard (home of the warrior gods), Vanaheim (home of the fertility gods), and Alfheim (home of the light elves). The middle level contained Midgard (our world, where humans live, connected to Asgard by a rainbow bridge), Jotunheim (home of the giants), Nidavellir (home of the dwarves), and Svartalfheim (home of the dark elves). The lowest level held Niflheim (land of the dead, dark and icy, ruled by a fearsome queen named Hel) and Muspell (where the creatures who will attack the gods at Ragnarok live). All three levels of this universe were kept in place by the roots of a giant ash tree called Yggdrasil.

The book has pages dedicated to specific gods and goddess, explaining their histories and roles in Norse mythology. Odin, for example, was the king of the gods, who created the world and humans and was the father of the other gods. His wife’s name was Frigg, and she was a mother goddess figure. Thor was the thunder god and the god of law and order. Unlike other gods, he mostly relied on his strength instead of magic or tricks, but he did have magic weapons, including his hammer, Mjollnir, which would always strike its intended target and return to Thor after. Freyja was one of the fertility gods, and she was the goddess of love and beauty. She later also became a goddess of death and was responsible for starting wars among humans. Loki technically wasn’t a god because his parents were fire-giants, not gods, but he was a close friend and sworn brother to Odin, so he was able to live in Asgard, too. Loki is known for being a trickster figure.

After the book profiles some of the gods and goddesses and other notable figures in Norse mythology, it tells some of the myths and legends associated with theses figures. One story that particularly interests me is “The Curse of the Ring” because this story and other aspects of Norse mythology provided some of the inspiration for Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Before it inspired Tolkien, this same story was also made into an opera by Wagner.

In “The Curse of the Ring”, Odin, Loki, and Honir kill an otter who turns out to be the son of a magician who sometimes turns one of his sons into an otter to go fishing for the family. (Maybe not the safest choice of fishing methods.) The gods offer to compensate the magician with enough gold to fill the otter skin. Loki goes to get the gold from a dwarf named Andvari, who has a famous hoard. Andvari has no choice but to give Loki the gold he wants, but Loki notices that Andvari also has a gold ring on his finger, and Loki demands that Andvari give him the ring, too. Angry at having his ring stolen, Andvari curses the ring so that it will bring misery and destruction to anyone who wears it. When Loki brings the promised gold to the magician, the magician also sees the ring and wants it. Loki warns him about the curse on the ring, but the magician insists that he wants it anyway.

The curse on the ring comes true when one of the magician’s other sons, Fafnir, kills his father for his gold. Fafnir takes all of the gold instead of giving his other brother, Regin, a share of the inheritance and turns himself into a dragon so he can protect his hoard of gold from anyone who tries to take it. Regin raises their nephew, Sigurd, to kill Fafnir and avenge his grandfather. However, the curse of the ring and the gold doesn’t end there. Regin tries to kill Sigurd so he won’t have to share the gold with him, and Sigurd has to kill him in self defense. After Sigurd rescues a Valkyrie named Brynhild, and they fall in love, they both fall victim to treachery from Queen Grimhild of the Nibelungs. Wanting Sigurd’s gold, she gives him a love potion that makes him fall in love with her daughter, forgetting about Brynhild. Queen Grimhild’s son also wants to marry Brynhild. Abandoned by her lover, Brynhild marries him, but driven mad with by Sigurd’s abandonment of her, Brynhild arranges for Sigurd to be murdered and then kills herself, setting off a continuing chain of murder and revenge after her own death that destroys the royal family of the Nibelungs.

The book ends with a “Who’s Who” section with information about various characters and creatures in the Norse myths.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Da Vinci

Da Vinci by Mike Venezia, 1989.

This book is part of a series of biographies of famous people from history. I’ve been familiar with the part of this series about famous artists since around the time the first ones were published. I was in elementary school school at the time, and we had the books because my mother used to teach the Art Masterpiece program at the school. She would come to class and talk about famous artists and show their paintings, and there would be an art project for the kids to do based on the style or subject matter of the artists. So, when I was young, we had books from this series (among other art books) around the house that she used for the art classes and a lot of arts and crafts materials (a tradition which exists to this day). At the moment, this is the only book from the series that I have because the book about Leonardo da Vinci was my favorite.

Leonardo da Vinci was one of the most famous artists of the Italian Renaissance, particularly known for his paintings The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, but he was more than just a painter. The book is full of interesting facts about his life as well as his work. Aside from showing photographs of da Vinci’s work, the book also has humorous cartoons about da Vinci’s life, which is one of the things that makes this series of books fun.

Leonardo began showing an interest and talent for drawing while he was still a child. Throughout his life, he also developed and practiced many other skills, including architecture and mathematics, music, and sculpture. He was a scientist and inventor, experimenting in many different areas, from the mixing of different types of paints to weapons design. Along the way, he found creative ways to combine his various interests. He used his drawing skills to develop his scientific ideas, and he used his knowledge of science to make his art appear more realistic.

You might wonder how one person could find so much time to do so much, but part of the answer is that he didn’t finish everything he did. He is known to have left some of his work unfinished, possibly because he got distracted by other, more interesting projects and pursuits or because he just couldn’t finish them to his satisfaction. Not all of his designs for inventions really came to anything, and not all of his experiments worked out, either. Some of his paintings are now deteriorating because the experimental paints that he mixed didn’t quite work out.

However, Leonardo da Vinci was a perfectionist, and the paintings that he did complete show excellent techniques and a high degree of realism that have been an inspiration to later artists for centuries.

One final thing I’d like to add is that this book is part of the reason I thought The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown was a dumb book. As I said, I grew up with art lessons. I read and loved this book about Leonardo da Vinci when I was a kid, and it has some very basic information about the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci that anybody who was seriously interested in him really should know. One of the cringiest parts of The Da Vinci Code for me was the part where our heroes are stupidly trying to figure out a message that is simply written backward. As this picture book about Leonard da Vinci points out, it’s common knowledge these days that da Vinci wrote notes using mirror writing. Some people, like the book suggests, think that he did that to make his notes harder for other people to read, although there’s also a theory that he did it because he was left-handed and that he decided that it was easier for a left-handed person to write that way. Left-handed people often complain about getting ink on their hands when they write left-to-right, but they don’t have that problem if they write right-to-left, so this might have been his attempt to get around the problem of ink-stained hands. Either way, if the people in The Da Vinci Code were such experts, they should have know this about da Vinci, and it should have been one of the first things they should have checked for. That’s not the only problem in The Da Vinci Code, but it’s one of the ones that rankled me the most because of how long I’ve known about this. (Also, The Da Vinci Code totally ripped off the albino assassin from Foul Play with Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn, but that’s another issue.)

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Drawing Fun

Drawing Fun by Carolyn Davis and Charlene Brown, 1988.

This book is part of the Beginners Art Series, and it teaches children basic drawing skills. The book is designed for readers to try out drawing techniques on their own as they read along and starts with a page that explains the materials they will need.

Because this is a beginning guide, the book begins by explaining that all objects and, therefore, all drawings, are made up of basic shapes. One of the keys to learning how to draw is studying the basic shapes and how they can be combined to create more complex shapes and drawings.

When beginning to draw, the reader should begin by sketching out the general shapes that make up what they’re drawing and then fill in the details.

Many of the drawing activities in the book focus on tracing shapes, drawings, and photos to learn how they are formed and practice drawing skills.

As the book continues, the techniques become more advanced and the drawings become more detailed. It gradually teaches readers how to use shadows and shading to make their drawings appear more realistic and three-dimensional. The subject matter of the drawing exercises ranges from basic apples to more interesting subjects, like teddy bears and people.

The book also explains how to use perspective in drawing to further add a three-dimensional quality.

I like this book because I think it’s a good introduction to a fun, artistic hobby, giving readers good beginning techniques.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC · 1 Comment

Bird Wise

Bird Wise by Pamela M. Hickman, illustrations by Judie Shore, 1988.

This is a beginning guide to birds and bird watching for kids. I thought that the guide was very helpful with nice, detailed illustrations. The book explains the appearance, biology, and lives of birds and offers activities to help readers understand and interact with birds.

The first section in the book is about the appearance and body parts of birds. It explains how different birds have differently-shaped beaks and feet and different types of feathers and how the differences help each type of bird eat the foods they like and live in the places where they live. One of the activities for this section is about how to start a feather collection. The book also explains that different birds have different styles of flying.

The section about how birds live explain about different types of bird nests and how they migrate and raise their young. The book explains different methods for making bird feeders and bird houses.

The book profiles certain specific types of birds, including owls (there is an activity about dissecting owl pellets, which I had to do when I was in elementary school), gulls, hummingbirds, and woodpeckers.

In the section about bird watching, the book offers tips for what to look for to identify a bird’s type. It also explains how to make bird blinds to avoid being seen and how to recognize types of bird songs.

The book also contains other helpful information, like how to care for injured birds and how to plant a garden that will attract birds. It also includes a board game that emphasizes some of the lessons about birds in the book.

Overall, I was pleased with the range of information in the book. It was interesting and well-presented.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Cat’s Cradle String Games

Cat’s Cradle String Games by Camilla Gryski, 1983.

Back when I was in middle school, I went through a phase where I was really into cat’s cradle. I’m one of those people who like to have something to fiddle with in their hands, and it was easy to carry a loop of string in my pocket. If I lost the string, I could always make another string loop and carry that. This was the book that I used to teach myself how to make cat’s cradle string figures.

The book begins with a section that explains the terminology of making string figures and how to start out with the string in a basic position on the hands.

From there, the book covers how to make various string figures. As the book demonstrates how to make different figures, it explains a little about which cultures use them. Cat’s cradle and similar string games are played around the world, and different cultures have had different names for some of the same figures. For example the “cup and saucer” figure can be called a saki cup or maybe a house if it’s held upside down.

Some figures can be made independently of each other, but what turns making string figures into the game of cat’s cradle is the fact that some figures can be turned into other figures in a sequence. The book demonstrates the sequence of making figures involved in playing a game of cat’s cradle. It’s a game for two players with the players each taking the string from each other to form each of the figures. The game ends when one of the players forms one of the ending figures that doesn’t lead to any other figure.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Understanding and Collecting Rocks and Fossils

Understanding and Collecting Rocks and Fossils by Martyn Bramwell, 1983.

This book is part of a series of beginning hobby guides for kids. It explains how to collect and study rocks and fossils and some of the deeper aspects of geology. The book emphasizes that studying geology helps us to understand the story of the Earth and the forces that have shaped our landscapes and formed the rocks and minerals we use. All through the book, there are suggested activities and experiments for readers, marked with the symbol of a red magnifying hand-lens.

The book explains some the large geological forces, like how the continents move and the plates that make up the Earth’s crust shift. Then, it explains the different types of rocks, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic, with examples of each type.

One of the sections I found particularly interesting is the one that explains about how to identify different minerals and what they’re used for. The activity on that page explains how to identify a mineral based on a series of factors, like whether or not it’s magnetic, the color of a streak it might leave when scraped against tile, and its hardness, which you can test by seeing what implement will scratch it.

I also liked the section about crystals and gemstones. There are instructions for growing your own crystals.

The section about fossils explains how to collect fossils, clean them, make plaster molds of them, and identify what organisms made the fossils. The book explains how fossils are made and had a timeline of past eras on Earth and the creatures that existed in each era.

The last section of the book explains the types of work that geologists do and the types of geological surveys they carry out to predict earthquakes and tsunamis and finding useful deposits of ore, minerals, oil, and natural gas.

There’s quite a lot of information to take in. Even though this is a pretty beginner guide to rock collecting and geology, I would say that the book would be better suited to older children than younger ones.

Posted on by TracyC

Discover the Night Sky

Discover the Night Sky by Chris Madsen and Michele Claiborne, 1989.

I bought this book at a school book fair when I was a kid, and it was my favorite book about the stars and outer space because it has glow-in-the-dark pictures. As a child, I loved anything that was glow-in-the-dark. Actually, I still do.

Every page in the book is designed to be interactive. There are pages that talk about different aspects of outer space, but the pages with the glow-in-the-dark pictures want you to guess what’s in the picture based on descriptions of it. Then, you’re supposed to turn off the light and look at the glowing picture to see what it is. You can see the what the glow-in-the-dark picture is without turning off the lights if you tilt the book and look at it at an angle or use a black light (like I did to take the pictures), but it is more fun if you really do look at it while it’s glowing in the dark. (Like other glow-in-the-dark toys, it glows better if the page has been in the light first to charge it.)

The pages after each glow-in-the-dark page have facts about the object in the glow-in-the-dark picture and an experiment for readers to do. The experiments help demonstrate the nature of the moon, stars, and planets, like what causes the phases of the moon, what causes seasons on Earth, and why you don’t see the stars during the day, even though they’re still there.

The information in the book is still factually correct, although it shows Pluto as being the last planet of the solar system. (Since people still quibble about this, I don’t consider it a big issue.) It isn’t a bad introduction to outer space for young children. The last page in the book is about the Voyager 2 space probe. Its primary mission ended around the time the book was first published, but we have contact with the space probe today (as of early 2021).

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive. The online version of the book doesn’t fully do it justice because you can’t take advantage of the glow-in-the-dark feature, but you can still read the text and see the experiment pages.