The story begins millions of years ago, when the site that would become Niagara Falls was beneath an ocean. By 18,000 years ago, woolly mammoths and saber-toothed cats roamed the glaciers there, but 12,500 years ago, melting ice had created lakes, rivers, and the waterfalls. People who used stone tools came to hunt nearby. By 500 years ago, erosion had gradually moved the falls upriver. More people came: in 1678, Father Hennepin wrote about the falls, and in the 1800s, sightseers visited in droves. Charles Blondin crossed the river on a tightrope, and at night, people escaping slavery were ferried across to Canada. After completing the historical account, Guiberson looks toward the landmark's future. Written from the falls' proud point of view, the informative text offers a new topic on each double-page spread, yet the account flows smoothly, and the details are well chosen for the audience. Low's well-composed, beautifully colored illustrations, created using ink, crayon, and digital media, show the grandeur of Niagara Falls from different viewpoints. An enjoyable resource for young researchers and armchair travelers.

Niagara Falls itself serves as the narrator of this lengthy anthropologic and geologic history of the celebrated cataract. The falls’ first-person account takes readers from its ocean beginnings millions of years ago to its present-day status as a world-famous tourist attraction. Depicted by Guiberson as both observer and participant, Niagara “cascaded, rumbled, roared, and tumbled,” “was a waterfall on the Underground Railroad,” and “became a waterfall of holidays and carnivals.” Low’s painterly aerial and close-up views convey the mist-shrouded landmark’s grandeur, as archival photo renderings, b&w artifact sketches, and images of the cliffs’ erosion over time overlay sweeping scenes. Unspecified “humans with stone tools,” an explorer, daredevils, freedom-seeking enslaved people, industrialists, and tourists are all portrayed in the extensive chronology. Though lines about modern-day visitors who “sense the Stone Age maiden and Hinu, the Great Thunderer” and “gulp the fresh air of enslaved people seeking freedom” strike an unfortunately romanticizing note, the volume offers a wealth of facts about the natural wonder via an expansive scrapbook feel. A bibliography concludes. Ages 4–8. (June)