WHAT ON EARTH? WIND

A multifaceted invitation to young readers to explore, create, and investigate the phenomenon of wind.

As part of a new series with an interdisciplinary approach to learning about our world, this combines reading with doing, offering facts and explanations, an Abenaki legend and Greek ideas about the wind, and two cheerful, original poems. Thomas explains that warm air rises, introduces the Beaufort scale, and discusses storms, wind chill, wind-dispersed seeds, and wind energy. She invites readers to investigate and create with crafty projects and poems of their own. Projects use familiar materials such as plastic bottles and straws and have clear directions. Templates are provided but some adult help is advised. The explanations are simple, sometimes too much so. Wind doesn’t really “push” sailboats, though it would push the wind-powered vehicle that is one of the projects. Many of the botanical examples will be unfamiliar to American readers. Each spread covers a single topic or project. Information and step-by-step directions are supplied in colorful text boxes, and plentiful flat graphics include children with various hair and skin colors (and almost universally red noses) as well as two world maps as background for facts about wind around the world. A companion volume, What on Earth? Water, follows a similar format.

A breeze through a subject often covered in the primary grades. Pair with Vicki Cobb and Julia Gorton’s I Face the Wind (2003).