Julie the Rockhound Review

How do you make rocks as interesting as, say, fuzzy bunnies or roaring dinosaurs? They don't do much, just lie around and wait for you to dig them up.

When Julie stumbles on a quartz crystal, she doesn't know what to make of it. Her Dad supplies all the answers as she asks and asks about where they come from, confusing "quartz" with "quarts" and a vein of rocks for the ones in her arm, etc.

Julie's merely a vehicle for learning information, and the plot plods wearily from fact to fact. It's a shame, because I know a few real rockhounds. My mother had a crystal she used for healing, and my mother-in-law goes to rock shows in Arizona.

Rockhounds are a quirky, self-effacing group -- often outdoorsy or New Age-y, and cheerfully aware that the rest of the world thinks entire boulders are banging around between their ears. More could've been done with either Julie's or her father's personalities to match the audacious and memorable folks I associate with this particular obsession.

I might also have liked to know where Julie lived. It's not as if someone in the Chicago suburbs could expect to find a vein of crystals in her backyard.

Exercises and end notes fill in some fascinating information, as is true with all Sylvan Dell titles, but I kept wondering if perhaps the author could've drawn more on her own life, as she described on the back flap. She's hiked petrified wood forests and dug into turquoise deposits in the Southwest -- both are fascinating enough settings for a child's adventure.