A breezy, buoyant bucketful of atmospheric basics.
A cloud experiences the ups and downs of the water cycle.
In a minimalist narrative attached to bright, very simple cartoon scenes in which everything from our nearest star to the tiniest water droplets sports a smiley face, Hodgson personifies but otherwise accurately represents natural processes. Sun (“I’m hot stuff!”) warms a lake so that evaporated drops rise and gather into Cloud, which, driven by a friend named Wind that “loves to blow warm air to cold places,” passes over mountains and under airplanes. When droplets cool off enough, they link up into geometrical flakes (“This is snow much fun!”), pack in until they fall as raindrops, or rub together to build up an electrical charge: “BOOM.” Clouds can gather from all over, then split up again (“Adiós!” “Sayonara!” “Jal gayo!”) after a storm while Sun shows off “a neat trick”: “RAINBOW!” The fleecy, blue-eyed wanderer returns at last to the lake…just in time for a meet-cute with a newly formed, pink-eyed compatriot. “Hi! I’m Cloud. What’s your name?” Younger cloud watchers drawn by the artless tone and the (literally) vivacious illustrations, which resemble tissue-paper collage enhanced with occasional brushwork, will be well set up to dive into deeper treatments of the topic, such as Antonia Banyard and Paula Ayer’s Water Wow! illustrated by Belle Wuthrich (2016). The small human figures visible in some scenes appear diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-14.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 90% of actual size.)
A breezy, buoyant bucketful of atmospheric basics. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-22491-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Rise x Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2020
A solid addition to Rotner’s seasonal series. Bring on summer.
Rotner follows up her celebrations of spring and autumn with this look at all things winter.
Beginning with the signs that winter is coming—bare trees, shorter days, colder temperatures—Rotner eases readers into the season. People light fires and sing songs on the solstice, trees and plants stop growing, and shadows grow long. Ice starts to form on bodies of water and windows. When the snow flies, the fun begins—bundle up and then build forts, make snowballs and snowmen (with eyebrows!), sled, ski (nordic is pictured), skate, snowshoe, snowboard, drink hot chocolate. Animals adapt to the cold as well. “Birds grow more feathers” (there’s nothing about fluffing and air insulation) and mammals, more hair. They have to search for food, and Rotner discusses how many make or find shelter, slow down, hibernate, or go underground or underwater to stay warm. One page talks about celebrating holidays with lights and decorations. The photos show a lit menorah, an outdoor deciduous tree covered in huge Christmas bulbs, a girl next to a Chinese dragon head, a boy with lit luminarias, and some fireworks. The final spread shows signs of the season’s shift to spring. Rotner’s photos, as always, are a big draw. The children are a marvelous mix of cultures and races, and all show their clear delight with winter.
A solid addition to Rotner’s seasonal series. Bring on summer. (Informational picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3976-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Enticing and eco-friendly.
Why and how to make a rain garden.
Having watched through their classroom window as a “rooftop-rushing, gutter-gushing” downpour sloppily flooded their streets and playground, several racially diverse young children follow their tan-skinned teacher outside to lay out a shallow drainage ditch beneath their school’s downspout, which leads to a patch of ground, where they plant flowers (“native ones with tough, thick roots,” Schaub specifies) to absorb the “mucky runoff” and, in time, draw butterflies and other wildlife. The author follows up her lilting rhyme with more detailed explanations of a rain garden’s function and construction, including a chart to help determine how deep to make the rain garden and a properly cautionary note about locating a site’s buried utility lines before starting to dig; she concludes with a set of leads to online information sources. Gómez goes more for visual appeal than realism. In her scenes, a group of smiling, round-headed, very small children in rain gear industriously lay large stones along a winding border with little apparent effort; nevertheless, her images of the little ones planting generic flowers that are tall and lush just a page turn later do make the outdoorsy project look like fun.
Enticing and eco-friendly. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: March 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781324052357
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Norton Young Readers
Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
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