Read the Words to know page together first: gem, rock and blue, each with its picture. Every other word in the story is either a short word to sound out or a common sight word such as the, is or you. Let your child point to each word and take their time. When one of the three taught words stops them, turn back to page 3 and its picture; for any other word, sound it out together rather than guessing from the picture. The age band is a guide, not a promise that every child is ready. Pages 22 and 23 give adults the facts and sources behind the pictures. For a longer book to read together, try Fold 2, Hello, Rare Stones!
The facts behind the pictures
Some gem crystals are found where they grew, inside rock. A rock is made of one or more minerals; a mineral has its own chemistry and crystal structure.
Rock hounds wear safety goggles when they hammer or split rock, because chips can fly.
The red crystals are painite, first found in Myanmar in the early 1950s by gem collector Arthur C. D. Pain. For many years, only two painite crystals were known to science, so the book says people once had just two.
Since the early 2000s, miners in Myanmar have found more than a thousand painite crystals and fragments. Only some are good enough to cut as gems.
This red gem is red beryl. Its crystals grew in cracks in rhyolite, a volcanic rock, in Utah's Wah Wah Mountains, where the Ruby Violet mine is the only known commercial source of gem-quality red beryl.
The blue gem is benitoite, which glows bright blue under shortwave ultraviolet light. These lamps can hurt eyes and skin, so people protect their eyes and skin when they use them.
Rare stones and how we know
The first known taaffeite was a gem that had already been cut, noticed in 1945 among stones from a Dublin jeweller.
Laboratory tests showed the stone was a mineral no one had described, and it was named taaffeite after Count Edward Taaffe, who noticed it.
Kyawthuite is known from a single crystal, found near Mogok, Myanmar. Scientists have just one to study; that does not prove no other exists.
The only known kyawthuite is a cut gem that weighs 1.61 carats, about a third of a gram.
The blue gem is tanzanite. Its only known source is the Merelani Hills near Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, where it is mined.
Rock collecting is not allowed everywhere. US national parks forbid it, and private land or a mining claim needs the owner's permission. Ask first.
A first book to read alone: a few short words on each page, repeated patterns, and the few hard words taught with pictures before the story starts.
- Ages
- 4–6
- Trim
- 6 × 9 in
- Pages
- 24
- Words
- 101
- Reading grade
- -2.5
See the printed pages
