Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Time Life - Planet Earth

I'm still catching up with blogs from my internet absence, and this somewhat old post at Magma Cum Laude on geological books caught my eye.

Unlike Jessica, I didn't grow up fascinated by geology (as I discussed here). So I don't have a list of favorite geology children's books.

There was one geology-related series that I loved when I was a kid. I started out by looking at the pictures and the captions, and only got into the (fairly dense) text when I got older: Time-Life's Planet Earth series. My ever-patient parents even let me get first crack at them when each new one arrived in the mail. The binding is pretty crappy and I pretty much wore out the "disaster" books, which freaked me out, especially the earthquake volume.

I thought that this was a pretty common thing to have in your library if you had a scientifically-minded household in the 1980s (and beyond). But then I realized that the only other place I've seen the series is at my dad's best friend's house, and since that series was right up GF's alley, it may not be that common in the general population. Does this series ring a bell for anyone else?

1 comment:

Anne Jefferson said...

I had (and loved) these books as a kid too. And, yes, the binding was terrible...but the pictures were fascinating. Appropriately enough, I remember being most entranced by the flood one and the volcanoes one. Of course, my mom was a science professor, so there were lots of sciency-books and several encyclopedia sets available in our reading corner. I don't remember ever seeing them in anyone else's house.