Water Dance

It can be hard to write an educational picture book. You don't have any plot (or you DO and it feels tacked on and weird), and it may be a subject - like the water cycle - that seems to go best with dry, flat, boring diagrams with arrows on them.

The author has completely eschewed the normal approach to go with beautiful, evocative paintings and poetry.

It's not as informative, maybe, as an early science reader approach, but for an introduction to the subject or a younger child - or just for having around the house! - I think this is the better option. So get one standard, run of the mill book on the water cycle, but be SURE to get this one as well. You won't regret it.

Thomas Locker blends beautiful oil paintings with scientific facts as he collaborates on this book with his science teacher wife, Candace Christianson. This is a science concept book that presents the water cycle-water in its various forms found in nature. The text effectively uses a first person voice, descriptive words and riddle format to engage students in each page: "I am....the rain, stream, river, sea, cloud, storm" etc.
This is a book that I would like to own. I have used it as a read aloud with Pre K students as well as students in fourth grade. With fourth graders, I read the story first and then followed up with an inquiry based, hands on science lesson about the water cycle called, "the Incredible Journey."

Pretty pictures, in the style of those big landscapes about conquering the American frontier, but the text was kinda poetical, kinda boring. Notes at the end to support the science of storm, lake, rain, river, etc.

The book explores the beauty and wonder of water through stunning watercolor painting and poetic text. The illustration depicts the many forms and moods of water from gentle rain to thundering waterfall, with emphasis on the interconnectedness of living thing. The book interduce children to the natural world and how water the exists in the world and the importance of it.

Age: 3-5 years
Source: Pierce College Library .

I wish so much that the design for this book had been done differently. The illustrations are gorgeous, but each page has an inch-wide sort of beige border, and that just really ruins it. If they'd gone full-page with the illustrations, they'd be absolutely striking; as it is, they sort of look like badly framed hotel art. It's really a shame, because between those illustrations and the lovely text, it could easily have been five stars.

This book is a more realistic book that teaches children 3 to 8 about the water system and how the rain can be a lake or a storm front, i would read this book to an entire class if we were doing a lesson plan on water, i would also read this book to any child who wants to know more about the rain's system and how it works. these pictures are realistic and do not have cartoon looking faces in the water or anything.

This is a beautiful prose book about water, with the text voiced by "water." Complementing the poetic text and inspiring paintings are fascinating scientific facts about water. Leveled to grade 3 for reading, 1 to 3 for listening.