This book presents some of Pearson’s new ideas about Stonehenge. Archaeology at its best, with vivid photography, maps, drawings, and other supplementary aids. Author’s Note, Timeline, Encyclopedia of Stonehenge, Additional Resources.

If Stones Could Speak is a narrative about Stonehenge and the discoveries made by Mike Pearson and his crew. This book questions previous theories made on Stonehenge while creating new ones as more artifacts are found, and different points of views are being taken into consideration. The concept of this book is to question everything, and to never expect a person to be right because of how high up they are, or how much experience they have. In the classroom, students can begin to make their own theories on Stonehenge using the evidence and information provided in this non-fiction informational book.

I actually did not really like this informational book, as I found it drawn out, but there were a few parts of it that were good. I did not like how the author wrote, or how it was not very engaging. However, the illustrations and images did make the book pop. The first reason I did not like this book was the fact that the author did not write at an age appropriate level. A clear example of this is using words like mortise, or when talking about how the stones were moved she does state very well how the archeologists discovered what they did. These words and the fact that she did not provide important details made me feel like she did not know who she was writing to. I feel like the book was not very engaging as dragged on and included many tidbits that did not need to be included. The main example of this is that the author talked about who controlled the site in present day and people that did not really contribute to the dig. On the other hand though, the images and graphs used by the author really made the book come to life and drew my eye to all the additional facts they provided. An example of this is when the author gave a bird's eye view of the Stonehenge site; she used the whole two pages, different colors and signs pointing to each part of the surrounding area. The main message for this book was to explain what has been found out about this unordinary statue, and what its significance may be. ( )

This was an interesting read about the possibilities of the reasons for the existence of Stonehenge. The author makes a point of teaching children to go with their own reasoning, to trust their own instincts, and not to follow the crowd, even if "the crowd" is a bunch of experts. Sometimes it takes new eyes and unbiased opinions to help people start to find the real truth. Good lesson for life, not only for finding out the original purpose for this famous site. ( )

Summary: This book explores the changing views on the history of Stonehenge.
Review: This book has a lot of good information on Stonehenge. It also teaches a lot about archaeology. The photographs and diagrams are very useful.