THE ROCK HUNTERS

A pleasant outing with Professor Kasai, a black geologist, his son Danny and Danny's friend Matt also turns out to be a successful rock hunt when Matt accidentally trips over the petrified log Professor Kasai has been searching for. Don't expect, however, to learn much about geology as most of the definitions are too incomplete to be helpful (a distinction between igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks is made, but there are no examples given) and even when we see Danny testing rocks we learn nothing of the results except that he had ""a card file full of rocks he'd identified."" It's also unfortunate that the story ends on a jarring note -- a purely gratuitous lecture on litterbugs which, like the perfunctory geology lessons, is unnecessarily didactic.