Amazon.com: Stories in Stone: Rock Art Pictures by Early Americans (9780395720929): Caroline Arnold, Richard R Hewett: Books

Book Description

Publication Date: October 18, 1996

A book about the rock art found on the canyon walls of the Coso Range, about 150 miles northeast of Los Angeles, California. The art is more than 3,000 years old and was made by Native Americans who lived and hunted in the area at the time.

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A book about the rock art found on the canyon walls of the Coso Range, about 150 miles northeast of Los Angeles, California. The art is more than 3,000 years old and was made by Native Americans who lived and hunted in the area at the time.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Gr. 4^-6. From the author and photographer who count The Ancient Cliff Dwellers of Mesa Verde (1992) among their successful collaborations comes another book about ancient Native Americans. Here they focus on the rock art found in the Coso Range of eastern California, which, with more than 100,000 examples, "is the richest concentration of rock art in the Western Hemisphere," and some of the drawings are at least 6,000 years old. Explaining that the term rock art refers to drawings that are carved or engraved into stone or are painted on rock surfaces, Arnold describes the various methods that were used to create the designs. She also discusses climatic changes in the area, beginning with the last Ice Age, and surmises what life might have been like for those ancient people. Unfortunately, her citations consist of "archaeologists call" or "experts agree," and she provides no sources of further information. Hewitt's wonderful full-color photographs show the landscape as well as a profusion of the ancient images and may inspire a sense of wonder in kids when they see the images and consider their age. The photos will draw browsers; their curiosity will lead them into the text. Glossary. Sally Estes

From Kirkus Reviews

Arnold (Fox, p. 894, etc.) visits the Mojave Desert's Coso Range for a look at some of the US's oldest, most durable--and most enigmatic--art. It's a good choice of location, with over 100,000 examples discovered: depictions of sheep, deer, coyotes, lizards, hunting tools and scenes, human figures both plain and adorned with feathers or other regalia, and more abstract images. Arnold describes the clever methods researchers use to date the petroglyphs and deduce who made them, and why; Hewitt's large, sharp full-color photographs capture the variety of the art and communicate a sense of their arid, remote setting. More cogent--and better illustrated--than Jennifer Owings Dewey's impressionistic Stories On Stone (p. 294), this offers an intriguing glimpse into an ancient mystery. (glossary, index) (Nonfiction. 9-11) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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More About the Author

› Visit Amazon's Caroline Arnold Page

Caroline Arnold is the author of more than 100 books for children. She writes both fiction and nonfiction and recently has illustrated some of her books with striking cut paper art. To see prints and cards of her illustrations, go to www.etsy.com/shop/CarolineArnoldArt. Recent nonfiction titles include A Polar Bear's World, A Bald Eagle's World, Global Warming and the Dinosaurs, A Panda's World, Giant Sea Reptiles of the Dinosaur Age, Super Swimmers, and Easter Island. Her recent fiction books include Wiggle and Waggle, a collection of five stories for beginning readers, and The Terrible Hodag and the Animal Catchers, a tall tale.
Her books have received awards from the American Library Association, the National Science Teachers Association, P.E.N., and SCBWI. Recently she received the Washington Post/Children's Book Guild Nonfiction Award for her body of work, the Leo Politi Award from California Readers, and from the Children's Literature Council of Southern California, the Best Written and Illustrated Suite of Nonfiction for children.
Caroline's interest in animals and the out-of-doors began when she was a child growing up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After majoring in art and literature at Grinnell College in Iowa, she received her M.A. in art from the University of Iowa. Some of her new books are illustrated with her own art. Caroline lives in Los Angeles and teaches part-time in the Writer's Program at UCLA Extension.