Fossil
PreSchool-Grade 3-At the beginning of this imaginative picture book, a girl finds a fossil ("I found a stone/that once was bone"). The action then jumps back in time to trace the life, death, and fossilization of the flying reptile whose remains she has discovered. The rich, rhyming text flows smoothly, lyrically describing a typical day for the female pterosaur: "Strong bone,/skimming salty breeze,/scooping squid from teeming seas." Vibrant watercolors capture her power and graceful motion, while striking splashes of blues, greens, and yellows create vivid backgrounds of sky and sea. When the pterosaur dies, she sinks to the bottom of the ocean, "living days done./But millions of days are yet to come." The paintings depict how the creature's bones turn to fossils over time, while above, the earth's surface continues to change. The satisfying final spread shows the girl from the first page, now with her mother, and repeats the opening lines. An afterword fills in some of the details about pterosaurs and how fossils are formed. Ewart's inviting text and dramatic artwork work nicely together to describe the fossilization process in an engrossing way. This book should have wide appeal.-Steven Engelfried, Beaverton City Library, ORCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.