Grand Canyon by Jason Chin, a book as great and big as its topic

Wow. I know that Grand Canyon by Jason Chin is a book intended for children, but I can’t stop looking at it. This is part science book, ecological text book for elementary through early middle school and self paced reading for kids who want to discover a place that seems magical, but is real. Grand Canyon manages to do that in a way that respectful and approachable to children, describing complex natural happenings in a way that they’ll understand and want to learn more about.

The ‘guide’ in Grand Canyon is a father and daughter who are hiking. They start out hiking in The Inner Gorge, an area of the park that is hotter and greener than other parts. As they move on and cross the Colorado River we see the Vishnu Basement Rocks, which make up the bottom most layers of rocks on the continent.

Don’t worry if you get lost or question your own knowledge during parts of the book. At every turn there are diagrams, pictures and examples of things that show what they’re talking about in the text. It’s almost impossible not to read a page and find two ways in which author Jason Chin is trying to teach the readers something.

As the two climb higher the text talks about how younger rocks layers are stacked on top of older layers. We see it in the text; there are a couple diagrams on the bottom of the pages illustrating sediment layers and a cut through hole on the right hand page. That hole leads the reader back in time to what the landscape might have looked like millions of years ago-at that particular spot.

As a kid, think of something that’s cool or fascinating about the Grand Canyon and it’s covered in this book.  It explores how the cliffs and slopes erode in different ways, how that impacts the trees and wildlife also.

From the perspective of an educator or parent, Grand Canyon does it in a concise manner that kids in third through fifth grade will understand when they read the book on their own. Our second grade student can read and understand most of the book, but is more comfortable when we read it with him. For us that’s great because we can explain more of the natural science concepts that they talk about in the book, but give them local examples that he can identify with.

Grand Canyon is as much of a ‘leisure read’ book for kids as it is educational. The artwork in the book is realistic and some of the best that you’ll see in a children’s book, much less a science book where it might not be expected.