Canyonlands National Park

By David Petersen

Book Overview

Describes the formation and features of the canyons created by the force of the Colorado and Green Rivers in Utah. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0516011324
• ISBN13: 9780516011325
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Children's Press(CT)
• Length: 44 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 7.5" x 8.7"
• Age Range: 4 to 8 years
• Grade Range: Kindergarten to Grade 3

Customer Reviews

Showing young students the wonders of Canyonlands National Park

If you were to think that Canyonlands National Park was near the Grand Canyon in Arizona that would be a reasonable assumption, but wrong. The park is actually in Utah, but within its 527 square miles the Green River meets up with the Colorado, the river that formed the Grand Canyon. While water and wind have carved out Canyonlands National Park in a similar way to the Grand Canyon, what I am most reminded of when I see the color photographs of the distinctive rock formations such as the Doll House, Turks Head, and Candlestick Tower is Monument Valley (you know, the one where John Ford was forever shooting movies starring John Wayne). As David Petersen points out on the first page of this New True Book, this is a park where you will not find any restaurants, motels, or souvenir shops. All you will find are strange rock formations. Petersen looks at how the shallow sea that was once the Canyonlands became layers of sand and animal shells that became sandstone and limestone, which over millions of years have been eroded and shaped into distinctive rock formations. With an attempt to have the photographs match up with the specific points under discussion, Petersen tries to cover all of the elements that have resulted in such different formations as large holes and arches. I appreciate the fact that Petersen admits that sometimes you need a good imagination to see some of the things in these arches that gave them their names, but the photographs of Angel, Wedding Ring, Washer Woman, and Wooden Shoe arches clearly look like their names. The rest of the book is devoted to the three areas carved out by the two rivers: the Needles, south of the Colorado; Island in the Sky between the two rivers; and the Maze to the west of the Green River. Along the way Petersen covers the wildlife native to the park, and touches on some of the things you can do to when you visit the park, such as river boating. The last chapter is specifically devoted to your trip to Canyonlands, covering the Native Americans who lived there and left rock art and driving home the fact that many areas of the park can only be visited by hikers since there are few paved roads. There are enough photographs of the western wonderland of Canyonlands National Park to get you interested in actually visiting the place. The back of the book includes a glossary of Words You Should Know from "ancient" to "wonderland" along with an Index. Petersen, who has updated this volume for the True Books: National Parks series, has written about just about every national park along the Rocky Mountains that you can name. This particular book goes into more detail than most on exactly how nature carved out the Canyonlands, so it should be helpful to students researching how rock formations are made, whether here or elsewhere.