After watching a Planet Earth episode my son decided he wanted to relook at how mountains are formed. So while we were at the library picking up reserved books we quickly went to search for a mountain book and he selected this one How Mountains Are Made (Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science 2). We have actually borrowed this book before but I think he was still quite young and he did not seem to remember it. I actually really like this book and think it is a great explanation of how mountains are created so I thought I would write a quick review.

Firstly let me start by saying it is an American publication so it does talk in Feet and Miles and at the back of the book their is map showing mountain ranges in the USA.

It starts off with some kids going for a walk in the mountains where they live and very subtly it mentions how the vegetation changes as they climb up the mountain and how they discover an ammonite fossil at the top of the mountain, which is a bit strange as ammonites were found in oceans and not on top of mountains.

So it goes on to say that their mountain was once a flat plain in the ocean and it then talks about the different layers of the earth (my daughter found this section a bit too simplified but my son liked it).

Then there is a great depiction showing four different types of mountains (everyone liked this visual comparison).  After that it goes onto explain how each different mountain type is formed. The explanations are well worded – very concise and they use lots of diagrams to explain.

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My daughter has actually been looking at this in more detail and she commented that she likes these explanations as they managed to wrap everything up into a few neat sentences.

It ends by explaining that just as the mountains are created over millions of years so too are they also worn away over millions of years.

I personally thought it was perfect explanation for my eight year old and a nice quick revision of key facts for my ten-year old.  We have read a number of books in this series and all of them have been really good.

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