Stalactite & Stalagmite: A Big Tale from a Little Cave

K-Gr 4–What did the stalactite nub hanging overhead say to the stalagmite nub below about a friendly ichthyostega who once visited but has not returned? “He’s probably extinct.” The retort? “Don’t say that. You don’t know.” Readers will be in suspense about the trilobite, too, who arrived but then needed to dip out to the water from whence it came and has not been seen since. Time passes, and a triceratops comes calling, and then the stalactite gets a licking from a giant ground sloth. In the ongoing patter between the always longer overhanging stalactite and friendly ever-taller stalagmite below, eras pass as they grow into the mysteriously beautiful forms we know. They and visitors converse over the meteor arriving that wipes out the dinosaurs. More time passes and humans draw on the surrounding walls; “We are getting closer together” heralds the modern age, and the two discuss what will happen when they inevitably join; this philosophical break in the action—as in Beckmayer’s demise of the main character in I Am a Tornado—keeps a childlike, matter-of-fact tone that will nevertheless have adults weeping. An incredibly accessible, fact-driven map takes readers from the “beginning” and the Archean Era to the present, a visual rendering that restates implicitly the mighty drip of minerals and water that have created this pair over eons. Back matter includes further enlightenment.