Ted Rand

This picture book explores the way mountains form and the way they erode from sun, wind and rain, and then they are sometimes reformed again into new mountains. At each stage of the mountain, a young girl makes a mountain out of sand on a beach. As the real mountain goes through the events that erode it, the same things happen to the girl's sand mountain, and she too rebuilds after a rain storm erodes it away.
I really like the way they juxtapose the girl and her sand mountain with events that take millions of years to happen to the real mountain, since that amount of time, on something so large might be too much for young children to understand. But they can probably relate to the girl on the beach with her sand mountain.
The author wrote the story while living in Seattle while taking geology classes. She wanted a local event that would demonstrate the point she wanted to make. The Chuckanut Formation in northwest Washington, which had rivers wear it down into thick sandstone beds and then rose into new crests. So there is a Pacific Northwest connection as well.… (mais)