So You Want To Be A Geologist

The ground beneath your feet is moving right now. A geologist is the person who can read what it's doing.

Some kids can't walk past an interesting rock without picking it up. Some look at a cliff or a canyon and wonder how it got there and how long it took. This book is for them.

So You Want To Be A Geologist is a beautifully illustrated Earth science and career exploration book for kids ages 10–14 (and a favorite of curious 8- and 9-year-olds who love to read alongside a parent). Part of the acclaimed So You Want To Be A… series of STEM books for young readers, it treats kids seriously and hands them the real texture of a geologist's life: the wonder, the spectacular field days, and the honest hard parts, too.

Inside, young readers learn to see a cliff as a clock and to grasp the astonishing scale of deep time. They explore the three kinds of rock—igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic—travel to the molten core of the Earth, and pick up the simple tools of the trade: the rock hammer, the hand lens, and the geologic map. They shadow a working geologist through a real day in the field, from pre-dawn coffee to a puzzling rock that changes everything.

Kids discover the many careers hidden in one word—volcanologist, paleontologist, seismologist, hydrogeologist, and planetary geologist—and learn how geologists keep people safe from earthquakes and eruptions, find the clean water and minerals a civilization depends on, and read the planet's climate record. They meet three real scientists whose stories capture the heart of the science: James Hutton, Mary Anning, and Inge Lehmann.

Packed with jaw-dropping facts about volcanoes, fossils, dinosaurs, plate tectonics, crystals, and minerals—floating rocks, petrified lightning, crystals the length of a school bus—the book closes with a kid-friendly glossary, honest guidance on what the job takes, and resources for where the adventure goes next.

A meaningful gift for rockhounds, future scientists, and curious minds, and a wonderful addition to any homeschool or classroom Earth science shelf. Meeting readers eye to eye, this is an invitation to look closely, stay curious, and never let anyone tell them a pocket full of rocks is a childish thing.