Icebergs and Glaciers
Our Price: $6.99 Availability: | Usually ships in 24 hours (as of 3:37 AM CT - detail) |
Product Description
The frozen rivers and sheets of ice known as glaciers can move as slowly as a few inches a year, yet they are a powerful force shaping the earth beneath and around them. Breathtaking photographs mark this dramatic introduction to a beautiful yet frozen world of mountaintops and polar regions.
Spotlight Customer Reviews:
Summary:
Simon's Sense of Icebergs and Glaciers
|
Comment:
Wouldn't it be interesting to know how Simon works? Does he accumulate all the photographs he wants, then write the text for his science books? Or, does he write his text, then collect photos? The reader knows that the photos are not his because he gives credit to the photographers on the verso/copyright page.
Also on the verso page, the Library of Congress summarizes the book: "Discusses the formation, movement, and different types of glaciers and icebergs, and describes their effect on the world around them." Yes, Simon does, he does exactly that, but in a much friendlier voice.
On page 3 (page 2 being a full-page photo of Antartica at midnight in the middle of summer), Simon begins: "For most of us, spring means the return of warm weather." He describes the thawing process, where it is cold and icy and snow-covered in the world, defines "snow line," then concludes the page with: "It is in the constantly cold lands and above the snow line that glaciers are born." Does it give you chill bumps?
Simon's development of ideas and writing skills are finely crafted together, orderly, logically, using vocabulary conducive to understanding. Amazon's description of the book rates it for ages 4-8, an obviously inaccurate assessment. Simon's books like these are more for ages 8-12 (or above or below depending on interest). Orderly means beginning with snowflakes, on to blue ice and solid ice, then an ice field sixty feet deep. "Then something strange happens. The huge mass of ice begins to move" (p. 6) and an explanation of sliding on melt water or creeping glaciers. Fast glaciers, slow glaciers, dangers of crevices, devastation of glaciers, rock flour, moraines, avalanches, and that's just half of the 42-page book.
I like my mind boggled from time to time. How are these facts for mind-boggling? The largest glacier in Antartica is larger than the United States, Mexico, and Central America combined. The depth of this ice sheet is 15,000 feet, or ten Empire State Buildings stacked one on top of the other.
Simon nearly always concludes with ecology in the forefront of our minds. He describes the effects of glaciers on the earth in the four to ten ice ages since the beginning of the earth. He concludes with the overall effect of global warming--and this was written in 1987 when we were just beginning to become concerned. My goodness, what would he say now?
This book is highly recommended for school library collections and parents who want their children to know about our planet Earth. After all, we all live here.
|
Summary:
A Marvelous Wonder of Nature.
|
Comment:
Icebergs are made up of freshwater, formed over centuries from snowfall which didn't melt. Over time, they are compressed into ice. The majestic glaciers did not form from the oceans surrounding them, which are salt water. Icebergs are the chunks which broke off from the high glaciers and gloat out to sea.
Pack Ice is composed totally of saltwater and composes ninety-five percent of the ice found in the oceans of th polar regions. Pack ice drifts on the surface of the sea and a single piece is known as a floe. On the beaches there are hugh mounds of saltwater ice joined to freshwater ice. It is thought that the Artic winds push the pack ine to the shore where it gets contained. Though the ocean and the seas are made up of saltwater, the icebergs and glaciers are composed of freshwater ice. An amazing phenonomon from Mother Nature.
|
Summary:
A GOOD BOOK FOR LATER ELEMENTARY
|
Comment:
This was a good book but I would not recommend it for kids ages 4-8. It was quite verbous. It was very informational, however, and a good source to use in the classroom.
|
|