WINDSONGS

In 20 expertly crafted poems, Florian illuminates the origins, types, and effects of weather.

Beginning with scene-setters about weather and our atmosphere and ending with a sober look at climate change, the veteran poet-illustrator riffs, often gleefully, on elements from rain and hail to frost and drought. He frequently uses personification, alliteration, and repetition, encapsulating solid information in economical rhymes and deft wordplay. “Cloud” narrates its own delight in “wrecking” the reader’s fun: “I rain cascades / on your parades. /…To nip your nap / I thunderclap.” Maintaining that “fog is just / a cloud that’s lost,” Florian describes how “it drifted down, / close to the ground, / then napped beside a hill. / And gave the day / ten shades of gray, / each un-fog-gettable.” Poems often take concrete forms, spiraling in “Hurricane” and assuming the shape of a funnel for “Tornado.” The text appears on pages of saturated color, opposite playful illustrations executed in gouache, colored pencil, and rubber stamps on primed paper bags. Humans vary in skin tone and cavort (and contort) in service of Florian’s visual jokes. For “Hurricane,” an umbrella-wielding person’s yellow slicker spirals round and round, echoing that poem’s shape. A “never ever wrong” meteorologist stands before a weather map, staring in shock at the barrage of hailstones despoiling a sunny forecast. In an image accompanying the last poem, three people—wearing caps that warn against damaging greenhouse pollutants—hold up our sea-blue planet.

Appealing information in a delightfully sunny package.