Nature Is a Sculptor: Weathering and Erosion

Gr 2-4–Whether showing the towering mountains of grit in the Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park in Utah, the rocky cliffs of the Cabrillo National Monument in California, or the graceful swoops of The Wave at Vermillion Cliffs National Monument in Arizona, full-color photographs make Kinser’s point over and over. Nature, with water—sometimes ice—and wind, scrapes out the most magnificent landscapes. “It shapes and shaves a dome, an arch, a hoodoo, or a wave,” the narrator notes, with examples that show steady but otherworldly erosion that has beauty in its geometry. She shows how ice can split a rock cleanly in two, create the glacial paths of the Grand Canyon, and reduce the black sands of Punalu’u Beach, Hawaii, to soft stones no larger than grains of cornmeal. The book takes the full tour of national parks in the U.S. before settling readers down with facts of weathering, erosion, and deposition. Further explanation of how nature’s tools—and human ones, like moving soil and rock during construction or farming—change the land is included, as are some of the effects explored in the poetic, compelling narrative. A glossary and further resources round out the back matter.