This was a fun and beautifully illustrated guide to crystals, rocks, and gemstones. I loved learning about all the different types, colors, features, and meanings.

The illustrations are great, probably the best thing about the book but the rest is nice too.
It's a nice overview over different crystals and rocks and how they are made. Not very in depth about, well, anything but great for some fun facts.

At the beginning there was a little sentence about how certain minerals are used in our daily lives and I was a bit disappointed that there wasn't a section on those.

I really like the art style for the stone illustrations. It is a scientific approach focusing on what the stones are not the New Age aspect of the stones. I really enjoyed that. It was grouped by type and that made it easy to see what the stones had in common. My favorite section was the Unusual section. It had so many neat stones and some I had never heard about. There were both science and history facts. I can't wait to get a copy of this book.

5 stars

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC copy of this.

This is a great book about minerals and gemstones for the slightly older kid reader. Not quite middle school, but above your basic readers. Even as an adult, I enjoyed the information and the reading level kept everything simple and easy to understand without being patronizing.

The images in the book were great. Really captured the beauty of the rocks and stones featured throughout the book. I love that the author included organic rocks and stones that don’t come about in the “normal” way of say, granite or quartz.

My only complaint is that some rocks weren’t obviously different variants of the same stone until you read into the description. The font size between say, “BERYL” and “BERYL: Emerald” (as in emerald is a type of beryl) wasn’t obvious to me, so it also wasn’t super obvious to me when we switched from types of beryl to SODALITE.

This could just be me because on my second to third flip through (one solid read through then a few other flips and spot reading), it seems more obvious but that’s partially cause I’m looking for it and I know it exists.

Overall, a great book on rocks, gemstones, etc for those wanting an overview but not quite an encyclopedia. I’d say 3rd-7th grade ish would be a good average area, but I honestly liked it as an adult.

Crystals, Rocks and Gemstones is a collection of facts on the aforementioned topics accompanied by gorgeous illustrations. It covers the history, science, and nomenclature among others.

This was a great read. It provides the perfect amount of depth of information. Theory gets combined with interesting facts, so it never gets boring. The beautiful illustrations by Olseid help illustrate these facts.

I adore that the author also included a chapter called "ethical concerns" and urges people to collect responsibly throughout. So important nowadays.

"Perhaps a sustainable and ethical model of gem collecting is one rooted in collectivism rather than individual ownership."

Crystals, Rocks and Gemstones is a great read for anyone interested in learning more about these topics. It is especially great for beginners to the field. This book would be a fun read to share with a younger audience as well.