Books

Hi, it's been awhile since I've posted. I don't know if y'all remember
me, but I'm the one who left my laptop on and my 8 yr old nephew
was reading EvC about the GC & the flood thread and even tho
I'm I was new to blindness he talked me into taking him to the
Grand Canyon to look at the strata y'all were talking about.He just turned 9 & called me last night and after 2 weeks of
thought told me wanted me to get him. So he asked me to ask
"the smart people" (he lurks here) for books on geology,
archeology, and paleontology. He says the ones at his school are
too 'baby-ish and don't go into enough detail for him. His cousins'
H.S. earth science text doesn't have enough detail either. I
explained to him that k-12 doesn't have the time to cover every
thing in detail.So can y'all help me out and suggest some books? Please keep
in mind that I won't be able to look through them myself, besides
he wants y'all to choose them! I'm just his old indulgent aunt!Thanks guys!

A public library might be a good place to start. If there is a university in town, they can probably get you set up with a community borrower's card.I never studied the topics you mention while in college, but I can tell you that in my area of study (linguistics) there weren't any technical books that were well-known (professors don't get on the NY Times Best Sellers list, true of non-fiction in general). So I would be surprised to find anyone who can just ramble off titles for you, and even more surprised if they are titles you can easily get your hands on.I have a suspicion, though, from working with children on reading skills, that his lack of interest in both the books at school and the high-school text books is probably related to both of them being outside of his reading level. It seems a little incredible, absent him being some sort of child with a special mental talent, that at 9 years old (3rd grade?) he is finding high-school text books to not have 'enough detail'or that he is able to read them at all, really. They probably just aren't covering the topics he wants to read about at a level he can understand. Thus he finds them 'boring'.But the solution here isn't to find books of increasing difficulty. Instead, you should ask him specifically which things he wants to learn about from the books he reads, and then find him books slightly above his reading level (his teacher or parents should know) that cover those topics. If you find that difficult browsing the children's section, then I would suggest looking to ESL materials, which cover a range of topics at different reading levels. If his interests are more adult, then he might also find ESL materials less boring while still being able to learn plenty from them.Anyway... I don't know anything. Best of luck. Merry Christmas, and hopefully in nine to ten years we'll see your nephew around here ready to share all he learned from your books!Jon

Wikibooks has a High School Earth Science book which looks pretty good. If he wants more detail than that, he may have to decide what he wants details about --- obviously with books there's a trade-off between detail and generality.

Don't underestimate a kid, Jon. At around 9 and 10 years old, both my sons were reading Tom Clancy novels for their own enjoyment. Also, that a textbook is for high school does not guarantee much about its reading level nor about its content. One of the principal problems in science education is the poor quality of the textbooks. And military technical manuals are written for high school graduates at a level that is specified as being "eighth-grade level"; that makes them some of the most difficult reading you can find, especially if you read at college level.Rather, I suspect that he has some somewhat specific questions that he's not finding in those books. And as I read further into your reply, I see that you are saying the same things.Also, I agree whole-heartedly that a public or college/university library would be an ideal place to start. That would also start to teach him the utterly vital skills of basic research.PSI shouldn't, but being the proud dad that I am ...About 30 years ago when my first son was about 4 or maybe 5, he was sitting on my lap as we watched the PBS series (no cable science channels in those days! ... which itself specifies the time in the past when cable science channels actually did deal in that subject matter), The Making of a Continent. The episode that night was ultimately about plate tectonics. As the program presented the information, my son kept saying, "I knew that." "I knew that too." Then the program showed the next thing (plate subduction, I think) and after a brief pause my son said, "I didn't know that." And then the next thing, "I didn't know that either." And then after that he kept quiet.Kids can be a lot smarter than we give them credit for. My second son was not the same cerebral powerhouse his brother was, but that could have been because he was more easily distracted. He was a wiz about biology, especially marine biology. At one Indian Guides "campout" in a cabin in the mountains, Shark Week was playing on the TV which the dads were watching. One of the dads asked, "What kind of shark is that?" to which another dad (not me; I was the JAFO there) replied, "Ask Matthew." Then the boys came running through playing whatever game it was and the first dad asked Matthew, he paused and looked at the TV, ID'ed the shark, and continued to play.Kids' minds are sponges. Let them soak up all the information and knowledge that they can!Edited by dwise1, : PS proud dad boasting festEdited by dwise1, : PPS

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In praise of my second son, Matthew. In his first middle school science class (6th grade?), he was always in trouble with his teacher. The problem was that he understood the material so well and was able to explain it better than the teacher (who was the home-ec teacher, though to be honest I don't know which was her primary subject) so naturally all the other students would go to him with their questions.

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Sorry to do this: http://dwise1.net/
Shines the name!

When I was on my own trip to the SW last summer I picked up 2 new books on the geology of the Colorado Plateau and the Grand Canyon. Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau, by Ron Blakey and Wayne Ranney and Carving Grand Canyon, Evidence, Theories and Mystery, by Wayne Ranney.These turned out to be 2 of the best books I have ever read. The first one has absolutely amazing illustrations and covers 2 billion years of geological history.

In the US Navy's fire-fighting school, we call those people, "screaming Alphas.", since a fire built on organic matter is a Class Alpha. I trust for my own sanity that I do not need to attempt to explain the "screaming" part.Similarly, from the NavTermFaq (the "Naval Terminology FAQ" at http://www.hazegray.org/faq/slang1.htm:

quote:

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FOD - Foreign Object Damage. Can be used as a noun ("Look at the piece of FOD I picked up.") or a verb ("Dave FODded his engine last night.") Any object, including people, which might be sucked into, and thereby damage, a jet engine.
FOD Burger — Someone who has become FOD.

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Sea Story from a friend's brother who served on the Kittyhawk (AKA "the shitty kitty") during Nam. He drove a flight deck crash truck. One night, he observed a CPO next to an aircraft. Next thing, that CPO had been sucked into the intake of that aircraft's engine in the most spectacular way, a kind of blended folding beyond all human comprehension. His armpit fouled with a structural support, so that shoulder is all that remained of him.PS
I am one of those weird or dangerous or interesting hybrids.In 1976, I enlisted into the US Air Force and was discharged in 1982. After having served in the USAF for six years, I affiliated with the US Naval Reserve, which much later morphed into the US Navy Reserve from which I retired 29 years later as a Chief Petty Officer.My active duty years were spent on a Strategic Air Command (SAC) base, even though I was officially in the Air Force Communications Command (AFCC). Our comm shop was in the Bomb Wing building. All the awareness training posters in that building were about FOD.In community college before I was inducted, I would chat with USAF veterans (some of whom still used govt issued pens). One who had been in SAC related a war story. During an inspection, Gen Curtis LeMay personally picked up a bolt from the flight line. He was demonstrating that FOD was everybody's concern.Edited by dwise1, : PS

Surely you are an awesome aunt! Probably second only to my own Aunt Shirley. I'd really like to hear about that trip to the GC sometime.I don't have a book recommendation, but I would recommend a visit to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.Virtual tour linkVirtual Tour | Smithsonian National Museum of Natural HistoryThe virtual tour might help your nephew focus on an area of interest. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Blindness. I am immediately overwhelmed with what you are facing ... followed by the usual bullshit etc, etc, etc, ... ... ...I assume here that you are receiving but not getting the customary BS ....I do still have my sight and all my other senses. My mind boggles at being blind. Perhaps that is the first hurdle I have to clear towards being mentally non-functional. Oh what a horrible state of being, forever having to try to choose what is really real. Or, ... ... ...including my own o

Aurelia (interesting and agreeable avatar; I will inquire no further, though I believe that I have been of like mind for half a century), I can suggest two books that I own, though with reservations that I will touch upon later:

1. Science and Earth History: The Evolution/Creation Controversy, Arthur N. Strahler, Prometheus Books, 1987. Strahler was a geoscience professor (died 2002), so geology was his fort. As per the title, the book is generally organized into pairs of chapters: one chapter presents the creationist ideas about the subject and the second chapter presents the scientific ideas as well as contrasting them with the creationist views. Since Flood Geology is very much a part of "creation science", a number of the topics covered do pertain to geology. I considered his approach to be non-polemic and in rough keeping with the "two-model approach", while creationists have condemned it as being very polemic.
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2. New Views on an Old Planet: Continental Drift and the History of the Earth by Tjeerd H. van Andel, Cambridge University Press, 1985. To be honest, I haven't read through the entire book, but rather it answered quite well a specific question I had. While driving up into the local mountains and casually (since I was driving on winding mountain roads) observing the exposed rock facings, I started to question the whole idea of radiometric dating of the strata. Most of the strata are sedimentary, which means that they are made out of worn-down old rocks. So if you radio-date sedimentary rock, don't you get the age of the original source strata instead of the the current sedimentary stratum? This book addressed that question. Sedimentary strata are dated by their relative position with each other, such that the strata higher up are known to be younger than the strata deeper down in the pile. Then igneous events at various points within that column provide tie points (at least in this book's terminology) so that we can determine brackets of ages for certain strata which give us fairly good estimates for the ages of the other strata bracketed therebetween. That is what I love about science: you are free to question what you've been told and are thus free to test everything and arrive at the answer.

However, both those books are older and probably out of print. Plus the first one may drift into subject matter that may not be what your nephew is looking for.For those and other reasons, I join Jon in suggesting the public library. Or the local college or university library. In the latter case, even if you cannot check a book out, you can still enter the library and read the book while you are there. Maybe you will find there the two books I have mentioned. Or maybe (ie, more likely) you will find even better books.I remember what some of my junior and senior high teachers had told me, even though I forget which ones they were. A college/university education is not about learning things, but rather about learning how to learn things. That is a valuable lesson for your nephew to start learning as well, however young he is. In junior high school and senior high school and college we are subjected to a recurring torture called the "term paper" or "research paper". Instead, that is what we are supposed to be learning how to do as a natural reaction to something that we don't know about. We have a question about something. What do we do? We research it! You realize that there is something that you need to learn. So learn it already! Research it! Think about the most advanced academics, the most learned people that can exist. They don't know everything; they cannot know everything -- that would be impossible for any human. So what do they do when there's something they don't know about? They research it and they learn it! So when you have something you need to learn, then research it and learn it!

Sounds about right. Most popular fiction is written at about a 3- to 4-year-old reading level. And it's important to know he is soaking up the information. Perhaps a test of comprehension on materials of different levels would be good, just to make sure he is actually reading the material instead of just looking at the words.

We could also be talking about Texas textbook ... with certain sciences suppressed for ideological purposes (they have tried to bring down science standards around the nation with their influence on textbook companies).Enjoy

Welcome back Aurelia I remember that and was impressed at the time. I would check in with NCSE: The National Center for Science EducationHome | National Center for Science Education has lists of books in left side-bar by categorysuch as Page not found | National Center for Science Education for books on that topicAnd I bet if you emailed them they would be very helpful.Berkeley has a terrific site for teaching evolution and assisting school teachers in this task at An introduction to evolution - Understanding EvolutionDon't know if they do the same for geologyEnjoy

I'd suggest that he start here.

Hi Jon, I need to buy them, he lives in a small town in Alaska, I'm
in Texas. I'm sorry, I should have been more clear. I'm blind, so I
can't read the books to see if they are too technical for him or not it's
just that the schools don't have the time to stay on one particular
for too long before they have to move along to another area. He reads at 7th level.The towns library is really small and he's read every thing have in the kids section on the subjects, he mainly wants details, details, that's how he explained it. He needs books because he's not allowed
to take his computer to his room so his parents can keep a eye on
what he's doing and he can read them in bed.He lurks here at EvC and that's ok with his parents, they find it's a great
educational resource for him and he has a good dictionary if he gets
stumped on the jargon used.
That's why he wanted me to y'all for book suggestions in case anyone
has kids around his age and would know of any books for an advanced reader.

Then there's my own book on historical geology, here ... bits of it may be too advanced, though.