OIL: The Buried Treasure

In a book as short and simple as this one, it seems silly to waste pages on how Indians painted their faces with oil, white men first used it for medicine (""They gave it to children who were sick. Ugh!"") and how some of it might be ""right there"" in the candles on your birthday cake. And what Gans does say about how oil was formed from ""buried and squeezed"" plants and animals includes two references to the dinosaurs that went into it--although in fact the oil we use was formed long before the dinosaurs' arrival. Later she mentions drilling for oil and pumping it out and lists some of the many products made from it to show that ""oil is a real buried treasure."" The only reference to supply is the assurance that ""more and more (pools)are discovered every year"" and ""there is a lot of oil that has not been discovered yet."" But kids won't discover much about it here.