Cave

One Small Square

by Donald M. Silver, Patricia Wynne

From the wriggly-one-celled bacterium to a sleeping grizzly bear, the cave is alive with activity and musty with history. Detailed illustrations and safe activities shed light on a mysterious habitat, complete with creepers, crawlers, swimmers, and fliers--hooters, buzzers, and growlers!

Genres: Science, Nature, Picture Books, Animals, Nonfiction

48 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Katharine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This little book had some excellent information- including how calcite is deposited (forming rock shapes like stalactites, helictites, and other formations you don't usually hear about), the reader gets to meet some tiny cave floor and cave stream animals, and bonus: a lovely diagram of how whole caves are formed from solid limestone.
As a negative point- I was a bit frustrated with the constant play on "when you visit your cave, be warned not to do such or another" which I thought distracted from the natural history. However- the quality info stuffed between that nonsense made it a worthwhile read.

[Aaron]

Cave is a cool-looking informational book about anything and everything to do with caves. In this book, Donald M. Silver dives into the formation, exploration, and life of caves. Most of the book is focused on the creatures of the caves, which is cool for kids. The placing of the words and pictures makes it seem like you're not reading an informational book, but this book is still full of great information about caves. The illustration is fairly real, but somewhat cartoonish which makes it fun and playful. You can probably find just about anything the casual learner would want to know about caves in this book, in a non-threatening and as fun as possible way.

I think this could be used in the classroom when talking about biomes and environments. All of Silver's books are great for informational reading about nature, and Caves is just another example. It could open an otherwise inaccessible world to students and spark their minds to the weird and wonderful world of caves.