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2005
finalists.

2005 Hackmatack

Children's Choice Book Award/Prix littéraire - le choix de jeunes

What a story! The characters are entire continents - moving around the surface of the Earth, crashing into each other, crushing islands, raising mountain ranges and opening and closing vast oceans - and the plot is nothing less than the formation of the planet on which we live.

The world's geological past is a mystery of vanished oceans, towering mountain ranges and crashing continents. How did these evolutionary changes happen? In Canada a scientific project called Lithoprobe uses huge earth-pounding trucks known as "dancing elephants." Scientists send shockwaves deep into the earth's crust which bounce back once they hit a surface below. The readings reveal what is going on below the earth's surface right down to the tectonic plates that underlie the land beneath our feet. Scientists can now map the earth's core and solve the mysteries of its evolution. Dancing Elephants and Floating Continents provides a fascinating and readily understandable explanation of the history of the Earth: how it has evolved and changed and how it continues to change, shift and grow. Filled with detailed, full-colour illustrations and original lithographic prints of the earth's core, this is a unique, educational and just plain cool view of the earth we stand on.

John Wilson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, though he now makes his home on Canada's west coast. He has worked as a geologist in Australia, and has mapped metamorphic rocks for the Geological Survey in Edmonton, Alberta. Today he is a full time writer.

Thematic Links

• Geology and ways to study the earth
• Tectonic Plates, Continental drift
• Earthquakes, volcanoes
• Mountains
• Meteorites
• Mapping
• Canadian shield, geology of Canada

Suggested Activities

• Visit a natural history museum or geology department of a college or university.
• Check out experiments in the book like:
       Make your own mountains, p.36.
       Find out about earthquakes, p. 22.
       Find out about rift valleys, p. 24.