Minerals and Rocks: A Beginner’s Guide

Discover the fascinating world under your feet in Minerals and Rocks. Written by a top mineralogist, this essential guidebook for young readers introduces key geological and scientific concepts and delves into the main features of minerals and rocks.

The chapter on minerals explores some of the most important and beautiful minerals on Earth. Readers will learn about common minerals, like feldspar and quartz, as well as ones that are critical to our transition to green energy, like lithium. A section on gemstones highlights the beauty of minerals.

The rock chapter explains how our Earth is a great rock recycler -- producing igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks through a number of natural processes. Explanations of how each type of rock is formed are accompanied by visual examples and captions.

This guidebook is capped off with a chapter on finding, studying and collecting rocks in your own backyard, with an extensive list of websites, apps and further reading to encourage young geologists to continue their explorations. Minerals and Rocks is a wonderful new introduction to this timeless and popular subject by a leading mineralogy expert.

Kim Tait is a Senior Curator at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Toronto. Kim’s research focuses on the formation of the solar system, and she is a collaborator on the Canadian Space Agency’s OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter team.