Table of Contents
Rock Art, Ancient and New
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By Emily Arnold McCully, The Secret Cave (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2010) is the exciting picture-book story of how four young French boys discovered the Lascaux cave paintings. For ages 5-9. |
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In Raymond Briggs’s Ug: Boy Genius of the Stone Age (Knopf, 2002), the Stone Age is all stone: Ug and his parents sleep in stone beds under stone blankets, and Ug, to his great discomfort, is even made to wear stone pants. As boy genius, however, Ug has ideas ahead of his time. (“Why can’t trousers be made of something else? Something softer?”) Eventually he invents the wheel and cooking, only to have both rejected by his parents, who don’t know how to cope with him. (“He’ll end up painting animals on the walls!” his mother cries in despair.) Which, in a final scene, Ug, now a grown man, does. The book, drawn in blocky panel cartoons, is funny, clever, and ultimately poignant; what looks like a joke soon becomes a parable about the difficulties inherent in trying to change the world for the better. For ages 7-11. |
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Justen Denzel’s Boy of the Painted Cave (Puffin, 1996), set in France during the Stone Age, is the story of an orphaned 14-year-old boy who wants to be a cave painter – but is forbidden by the tribal leader. Cast from the tribe, he befriends a wild dog, is mentored by an aged painter named Graybear, and eventually comes into his own. For ages 8-12. |
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Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a spectacular documentary on an expedition into France’s Chauvet caves to view artwork dating back 30,000 years. 90 minutes long, rated G. Available on DVD. |
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Geri Schrab’s Weaving the Past with the Present is a coloring book of ancient North American petroglyphs and pictographs. |
| Petroglyph Photos has a collection of great color photographs of petroglyphs from sites worldwide, including the American Southwest, Hawaii, India, Mexico, and Norway. | |
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In Linda Kranz’s rock-illustrated picture book Only One You (Cooper Square Publishing, 2006), Adri’s parents decide to pass down useful wisdom to their son (look for new friends, enjoy the simple things, don’t follow the crowd). The illustrations are brightly painted pebbles designed to look like fish. (Make some of your own.) For ages 4 and up. |
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Linda Kranz’s photo-illustrated Let’s Rock (Cooper Square Publishing, 2003) is a collection of rock-painting projects with step-by-step instructions. For ages 6-12. |
| With this Rock Painting Kit, kids ages 5 and up can make painted pet rocks. On the other hand, all you really need here are paint and some nice smooth rocks. Just saying. | |
| Martha Stewart’s Rock Crafts (“endless possibilities”) has suggestions for rock dominoes, rock bookends, rock refrigerator magnets, and helpful hints for making a lot of rock animals. | |
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Pebble Plaque is a project in which kids collect a batch of wonderful stones, then combine them with salt dough. The result is awesome. |
| From Artists Helping Children, Rock Crafts for Kids has a long list of projects. Make a paperweight, a crystal rock garden, homemade stepping stones, a pebble mosaic, and a rock necklace. | |
| The Sculpture House Stone Carving Kit is targeted at beginners: included are carving tools, chunks of alabaster and soapstone, and an instruction booklet. |