When You Find the Right Rock

K-Gr 4–With everything in common with Ruth Krauss and Maurice Sendak’s A Hole Is to Dig, Ray and Sala offer children a rare picture book look at rocks and what they are good for. Some are to climb on, as every parent has witnessed, and some are just right for putting in a pocket while others can be stacked. Some can be lined up in neat rows, mapping out the rooms of a temporary house. Large rocks demonstrate what heavy feels like, but so does a big bag of small rocks. This is blissful stuff, mostly because Ray has a lot to say about her topic, and all of it will matter to young readers. Sala’s colorful illustrations take the same approach: there isn’t one kind of right rock, but hundreds of them, and she finds many hues for those, as well as for the people playing in her pages. White rock, blackened stone, blue skin, purple skin tone—the creators are in ideal concord for waking up readers to the variety of rocks, as well as the variety of humans; children can hold both, no matter the size of their hands.