Age: 8 to 12 Years

• A mesmerizing overview of the world as it was when glaciers covered The Earth and long-extinct creatures like the woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats battled to survive. Go back 20, 000 years ago to a time of much colder global temperatures when glaciers and extensive sheets of Ice covered much of our planet. As these sheets traveled, they caused enormous changes in the Earth's landscape and Climate, leading to the evolution of creatures such as giant armadillos, saber-toothed cats, and woolly mammoths as well as club-wielding Neanderthals and later the cleverer modern humans. Nico Medina re-creates this harsh ancient world in a vivid and easy-to-read narrative.
• Binding: Paperback

What Was the Ice Age?

• Southwest France, September 1940
  
• Eighteen-year-old Marcel Ravidat is exploring the forest outside his village with three friends. People say there is a secret underground passage in these woods that leads to a nearby castle.
  The four teenagers spot a small opening in the ground. Could this be the way to the castle . . . or to buried treasure?Marcel is the first to lower himself into the dark. The fifty-foot passage is long and narrow. Marcel is terrified. When he reaches the bottom, he sees that he is inside an enormous cave. But it is too dark to see much else.
  
• So Marcel climbs back up. The next day he returns to the cave with his friends. This time he has a grease gun to use as a torch.
  
• Back in the cave, what the boys see amazes them. All over the curving cave walls are hundreds of colorful paintings of prehistoric beasts. The animals almost seem to come to life in the flickering light!
  
• Sixty horses gallop along the cave walls. Red deer swim across a river. Shaggy-haired rhinos thrust their sharp horns in the air. Some of these paintings are huge. One of a giant ox measures eighteen feet across!
  
• A lone human figure, wearing a bird mask, appears on the wall. He is being charged by a bison. The animal is injured. A spear is stuck in  its belly. Its guts are spilling out!
  
• The boys can’t believe their eyes. They are gazing at scenes from a long-lost world. What they’ve discovered is far more interesting than some old castle.
  
• Today scientists know that these cave walls at Lascaux (say: law-SKO) were painted by humans living 17,000 years ago. These artists lived during a very cold period of Earth’s history: the Ice Age.
  
• During the Ice Age, great sheets of ice covered much of Europe, Asia, and North America. People took shelter in caves for warmth. (That is where the term caveman came from.) Animals like bears, lions, and hyenas also lived in caves, so house hunting was a deadly affair!
  
• People’s chances of staying alive depended on their ability to adapt—to learn how to survive in a world of fearsome predators and wild weather.
  
• The Ice Age was certainly a difficult and dangerous time to be alive.