Did you and your family (particularly the kids) come home from vacation with more than sand and dirty clothes in the suitcases? Perhaps rocks from the mountains or seashells from the beach?
Books from the library can help identify and categorize these keepsakes that may grow into a collection.
The Eyewitness handbook Shells: Investigate and Understand the Enchanting World of Shells by Jennifer Coldrey points out that you can pick up empty shells "from woods, parks, fields and gardens, near ponds and streams as well as at the seashore."
Learn how a shell is built and fascinating information about its inhabitants from this book.
Divided by type of shell and habitat, it suggests ways of organizing the shells and gives directions for making a display box and labelling the shells.
Rocks and Minerals by R.F. Symes, although not an identification guide, is a very browsable, useful survey of how rocks are formed and includes precious metals and rocks used for dyes in times past.
John Farndon's Rocks and Minerals, one of the Science Experiments series, does show how to identify rocks and minerals, and also how to make your own fossils. Perhaps trips to other countries triggered an interest in stamps, or those leftover foreign coins cry out for display or organization.
The Stamp Bug by Douglas and Mary Patrick offers fascinating insight into the history of stamps, ways to identify them, mount them, and preserve their value.
Get Started: Stamp Collecting for Canadian Kids, more colourful, more recent, and less academic, also focuses on the technique of collecting. Coin collecting is another way to "go around the world".
The Guide to Coin Collecting by David L. Ganz, practical and encouraging, is "the only book you need to become a first-class coin collector," including finding and identifying coins, caring for them (don't polish them!), and exhibiting your collection.
If the collecting bug has bitten, the library can only cultivate, not cure.
