The Fifty State Fossils by Yinan Wang (illustrations by Jane Levy): Book Review

Okay, so The Fifty State Fossils by Yinan Wang, with illustrations by Jane Levy isn’t the kind of book I’d normally pick up and read, let alone review. It’s a children’s book, and I’m way past that state just now. But it did catch my attention because I’m a geoscientist (though not a palaeontologist, of fossil specialist) and because it struck me as the kind of book from which I could learn something.

For a start, I didn’t know that states had state fossils. They don’t all — some have state dinosaurs and some don’t have anything at all, but for those not blessed in this particular way there’s a recommendation, so every state has a page. The author has even managed to come up with something for Hawaii, which is way younger, geologically, than most of the fossils described in the book. 

I was surprised, in  good way, by the amount of information the author and illustrator managed to pack into such a small space. Each page has a section on the appropriate fossil, with a description, some basic information (remember this is a children’s book, so nothing too complicated) and a note on it’s relevance to the state. Alone with this, illustrator Jane Levy has produced a drawing of each fossil as it might have been when alive, and there’s a map showing where in the state it has been found and, for good measure, a photograph of it in its fossil state. 

There’s also an impressive amount of ancillary information. The early part of the book has some simple definitions of the geological context, explaining taxonomy and the geological timescale, while the back includes some really useful listings of places to go fossil hunting and a glossary of terms.

All in all I found it a fascinating read and can imagine it would go down extremely well with the next generation of budding fossil-hunters. 

Thanks to Netgalley and Schiffer Publishing for a copy of this book in return for an honest review.