PARTLY CLOUDY

The scoop on clouds, led by two long-eared skywatchers trading observations and outlooks.

“Rapunzel! Rapunzel! Let down your hair!” cries one plushy little white rabbit, gesturing theatrically at the sky. Responds a second bunny, with eyeglasses: “Those are CIRRUS clouds, and they are basically a lot of microscopic ice crystals.” That’s just one of several similar exchanges beneath gathering cumulus clouds of various sorts, but when storm clouds deliver a mighty BOOM! of thunder, the roles reverse, and it’s the one without glasses delivering the cerebral disquisition on cumulonimbus while the other squeaks about a “humongous monster!” They are, of course, both right…as readers able to let their imaginations roam and also absorb Freedman’s unusually expansive gallery of cloud types will be well equipped to understand. Along with the pleasures of viewing diaphanous watercolor portraits of the 10 main types of clouds and less common sorts ranging from virga and lenticularis to mammatus and wavelike Kelvin–Helmholtz, Freedman offers additional facts in inset boxes, plus lucid schematic views of how clouds form and of the whole water cycle to boot. “There is so much to learn about clouds!” marvels one bunny. And indeed, so much to learn about the world and how we perceive it.

Cirrus-ly great.