Grand Canyon

by Jason Chin

A captivating and imaginative look at the various ecosystems and geologic history... read more

A captivating and imaginative look at the various ecosystems and geologic history of the Grand Canyon is a journey through space and time. Pen-and-ink, watercolor, and gouache illustrations that are both sweeping and detailed follow a girl and her dad, both of Asian heritage, as they hike from the bottom of the canyon, where they’ve been camping, to the top. As they journey upward, they move through the changing ecosystems at various elevations, but also through time as their present-day journey alternates with page spreads showing the girl’s imagined foray into the past at that particular spot (e.g., holding her breath beneath a sea, or caught in a desert sandstorm). The informational narrative, which never refers to the hikers directly but occasionally references “you,” is supplemented by additional information on the bottom of the present-day pages detailing things such as the animals found in that particular ecosystem/ elevation, or the formation of rock layers, or the detritus left over time from when what is now a canyon was once a sea, in a book that works on both a grand and intimate scale. (Ages 6-10)

© Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2018

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