JIGSAW CONTINENTS

In its opening at least, another trivialization. Whereas Weiss' misdirected Lands Adrift (1975) features Benjamin Franklin and compares drifting continents to a touring ship, Berger begins with trumped-up drama (an earthquake in Guatemala) and references to angry gods--and the next double-page picture, presumably illustrating a paragraph introducing plate techtonics, is of two dinosaurs facing off. Later on, this entry differs from other juveniles on the subject in that instead of summarizing arguments and tracing the process of discovery, it simply explains that the earth's surface consists of rocky plates which ""jostle one another at the edges,"" musing earthquakes or forming mountains, and that (as ""some theorize"") there was once a giant super-continent which has split up and drifted apart. A reasonable approach, now that the idea is established--but Berger's presentation is neither as serious nor as basic as it could be at this level.