When I was a little girl, I spent hours under our old house digging up stones. Some were quite ordinary but every now and then I would find one with beautiful streaks of blue or red and others with very strange shapes. Some looked as if they were from old bits of crockery so I felt as if I was back in time with the people who lived there before me.

In this book, Mark Greenwood tells us that every stone has its own story. It could be from a shooting star or a meteorite from Mars, or it might hold a preserved prehistoric fossil. He tells us that:

Crystal is stone
of complex geometry
prisms and cubes
atoms and molecules.

And, with the help of our illustrious illustrator, explains birthstones for each month of the year.

Every page in this book is written so poetically, sometimes with just a sentence: A stone is a ripple of remembrance. And every page is so uniquely and imaginatively illustrated that you want to linger there and take it all in.

This is a beautifully produced book from its stone-like cover right through to the last page where Mark Greenwood reminds us again:

Every stone has a story –
An echo of time
The memory of a place
Where wonder is found.

I hope this book will encourage your children to want to play outside and find stones of their own.

Reviewed by Merle Morcom
Age Guide 10 to ageless