Children’s Book Review: Little Kids First Big Book of Rocks, Minerals, and Shells – Summer Read-to-Learn

LITTLE KIDS FIRST BIG BOOK OF ROCKS, MINERALS, AND SHELLS

By: Moira Rose Donohue

Published: July 13, 2021

Publisher: National Geographic Kids

Non-Fiction

This new addition to the popular Little Kids First Big Book series focuses on rocks, minerals, and shells. What little kid doesn’t love rocks? I think each one of our kids loved picking up rocks whether we were in a park or in our own landscaping. They also loved collecting shells on our visits to the various beaches. This book teaches young readers about the wide variety of rocks, minerals, fossils, gemstones, and shells.

Kids will learn that many of our rocks come from erupting volcanoes. They will learn the type of rock it is, how hard or soft it is, where it can be found, and its uses today. Obviously, the pages are full of photographs, but there are also fact bubbles, information boxes, and interactive questions to get kids thinking outside the box. At the end of each section, there is a fun quiz to see what they remembered learning. The end of the book includes tips and activities parents can do with their kids to learn even more.

Fossils are one of the rocks featured in the book. Since I grew up with a river in our backyard, we have found several fossils. We even found a nearly perfect fish-head fossil that I thought was pretty cool as a kid.

Sulfur is another featured mineral. We saw lots of sulfur, and smelled it, on our visit to Yellowstone.

Marble is what was used to make the Taj Mahal. What I didn’t know is that it took 21 years and 20,000 workers to build it.

The state rock of Iowa is a geode. A geode is a rock with the mineral quartz on the inside. They are very pretty once you break them open. Otherwise, they just look like a regular rock.

With just a few weeks of summer left, I encourage you to take your kids outside to a beach, lake, riverbank, or mountainous area and look for all different kinds of rocks, minerals, or shells. Then use the activities in the book to help your kids learn about them. Plus you can start your own collection as we have.

To purchase a copy of LITTLE KIDS FIRST BIG BOOK OF ROCKS, MINERALS, AND SHELLS, click the photo below:

---

All summer I’ll be sharing books for kids of all ages on topics that will interest them or offer them a new interest to learn about. Most of the time these will be nonfiction books, but sometimes we can learn how to be better people or learn empathy from fictional stories too.

So, I hope you will stay tuned to these posts. They will always have Summer Read-to-Learn in the title and in the tags. There will be books from some of my favorite publishers like National Geographic, plus, some from independent publishers. See them all, HERE.

---

---

Other posts you might like:

Children’s Book Review: Little Kids First Big Book of Pets By Catherine D. Hughes

Children’s Book Review: Dream Big, Little Scientists by Michelle Schaub

Children’s Book Week 2020: The Big Book of Bling by Rose Davidson

Children’s Book Review: National Geographic Weird But True! and Why Not? – Books as Gifts

Children’s Book Review: Brain Candy by Julie Beer and Chelsea Lin

---

Thanks to the publisher for sending a copy of this book for the purpose of this review. This review is my honest opinion. If you choose to make a purchase through the above links, I may receive a small commission without you having to pay a cent more for your purchase.