“Dig It! The Secret Life of Soil” – SSSA General Interest Soils Book.

In July 2008 the Smithsonian Intuition’s National Museum of Natural History opened “Dig It: The Secrets of Soils”, an exhibit dedicated to soils.  In conjunction with this exhibit a subcommittee of the SSSA’s K12 committee undertook the task of developing a kid friendly book to highlight soils.  The committee had a wide soils background so was able to develop rough materials to cover most aspects of soil science.  The book outline was driven by the ever changing SI exhibit’s outline.  This in itself presented challenges for the subcommittee.  Eventually it was decided that a book designer and editor needed to be brought on board.  These individuals took the information and images the subcommittee developed and molded them into a book that would be appealing to children while still presenting solid soil science.  At numerous stages of the compilation the book draft was field tested to 4^th grade classes (the target age group) to determine what was working or not working.  This type of peer-review is a departure from what many on the subcommittee were comfortable with but it did improve the overall book.  In the end a high quality, visually attractive, scientifically accurate book was produced.