Kids’ Book Review: Exploring Geology with Mr Hibb

by Michael J. Oard, Tara Wolfe, and illustrated by Chris Turbuck

Huzzah, a serious Creationist kids’ book to review!

Just after the New Year, we had a small order to get from CBD. To qualify for the free shipping deal, we had to purchase a bit more. I’d been wanting to get a copy of this book for a while and, sure enough, they had it! Thank you, Lord. 😀

The book is a nice sized hardcover with fun illustrations decorating it. Even better, every page inside has similar drawings to hold your interest as well.

I was a little worried when reading the vocabulary in the preface that the whole thing would go over kids’ heads. That didn’t end up being a problem at all. The writing does have a tendency to slip into school textbook style, except when the authors remembered it was supposed to be about Mr. Hibb, but it’s always a quality textbook!

I’ve been rather hogging the book for myself until writing this, but have no doubt my 10 year old can handle this on her own. An 8 year old who likes geology and can read well is going to have no problem either. The best part is all the pictures. They match what’s being talked about in the text and are really well done. Even my 3 year old wants me to snuggle with him and look at Mr. Hibb and his crazy adventures!

….OK, I took a break to do just that. My 3 year old sat for over 15 minutes as I ad-libbed what the illustrations showed. Now, my 10 year old is hogging the book: “whoever made this did a really good job.” And my take, “the illustrator is genius.”

Besides the illustrations, the best feature of this book is the Hands On Activities. A dozen times throughout, there are simple things for kids to do picturing what they’re learning or even recreating a process. Since I like to keep my hands clean, I just read about them, but next Summer I’ll hand the book to the kids to do them for themselves!

There’s a fair amount of worldview thrown into the book. It’s not designed for teens and adults, rather more than less presuming the Bible is completely trustworthy. But, there are whole books written about those topics for later.

The main points of the book are:

• Introduction to rocks with later descriptions of metamorphic and sedimentary rocks
• The World-Wide Flood:
  • a. Noah’s ark
  • b. The power of rushing water
  • c. Sedimentation processes
  • 1. Making sense of fossil formation (some of the best i‘ve seen on dinosaurs, their tracks, and eggs)
  • d. Late flood runoff processes
  • The Ice Age

That last section is particularly well done since Michael Oard is the author. He’s spent vast quantities of time studying the Ice Age and written other books on it. His viewpoint comes through quite strongly and this book makes a great case for him.

The one area I wish they’d been more careful to address is the Geologic Column. Without it, Evolutionists don’t have a leg to stand on. So, you’ll have to supplement there, but it’s not too hard. 🙂

Altogether, I’m putting this at the top of my “suggested resources” list. Geology is the strongest area the Evolutionist and Uniformitarian has. Even Bible believers who understand the problems with Evolution are often deceived by the case geologists make for slow, gradual changes in the rocks.

This book gets things down to a 10 year old’s level clearly and attractively.

In fact, any person who doesn’t feel silly having the main character be a four-legged grasshopper (picky, picky, I know) is going to learn a lot from this book. I’d heard a tiny bit about sea mounts and water gaps before this. The book lets you “see” how things can happen.

Oh, yes, part of why I’d not handed the book over to my kids yet is I need to get out some tape to reattach the glossary at the back. The book is published by Creation Book Publishers and whatever stitching machine they used let a whole section fall out.

Now, I can’t wait to get my hands on The Case of the Missing Mountain also produced for Creation Ministries International. 😀