Under The Microscope

LANDFORMS, by Lloyd Homer, Peter Spratt, John Begg; DSIR Geology and Geophysics; 12 posters, 30 pages; $50.00

It must have happened to other people. Your teacher takes you on a class trip up a hill and you spend an afternoon staring at the horizon, desperately trying to work out which particular set of lumpy bits you should be looking at.

Along comes Landforms, a set of 12 posters of New Zealand geographical features with an accompanying resource book. This has a teacher's page and a student's page for each poster, including a brief description of each landform, a glossary of terms, a set of questions, answers for the teacher and -- glory be -- a sketch key to each poster. No more confusion over the lumpy bits!

But the sketch key is on the teacher's page. Poor fools like me will never get to see it. Ah well, I would probably have made a lousy geologist.

Actually, I can't really fault either the concept or the execution. The text is interesting, the questions are challenging, the glossary is helpful and Lloyd Homer's stunning posters will be gracing the NZSM office walls as soon as we can track down the NZSM office blutack.

Tony Smith, NZSM