How Mountains Are Made

Even though Mount Everest measures 29,028 feet high, it may be growing about two inches a year. A mountain might be thousands of feet high, but it can still grow taller or shorter each year. Mountains are created when the huge plates that make up the earth's outer shell very slowly pull and push against one another. Read and find out about all the different kinds of mountains.

Even though Mount Everest measures 29,028 feet high, it may be growing about two inches a year. A mountain might be thousands of feet high, but it can still grow taller or shorter each year. Mountains are created when the huge plates that make up the earth's outer shell very slowly pull and push against one another. Read and find out about all the different kinds of mountains.

Children's Literature

This book explains a big subject to little people. A group of kids hikes up a mountain and discover an ocean fossil. In learning why a fossil was on the mountain, they also learn about the four different types of mountains: folded, dome, fault-block, and volcanic. The kids discover that mountains are hardly static: some are shrinking, through the long-term effects of rain, wind and ice, while others are growing. Mt. Everest may be rising as much as 2 inches a year. This is a nice presentation of the complex geologic workings of our planet and gives kids manageable ways to think about the vast piles of rock that we call mountains. "Let's-Read-&-Find-Out Science" series-Stage 2.

Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld's books include Did Dinosaurs Have Feathers?, Terrible Tyrannosaurs, and Dinosaur Babies, which School Library Journal said "will be welcomed with deserved delight by young dinophiles." She has also written Dinosaur Parents, Dinosaur Young, an ALA Notable Book. Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld lives in Berkeley, California.