THE LITTLE RAINDROP

Little Raindrop journeys from cloud to sea and back again.

This is the water cycle, but it’s a simplistic telling that lacks any scientific vocabulary and stars an anthropomorphized water droplet with a face, hands and feet. Little Raindrop’s adventure begins as he falls from a cloud “[o]ne dark and stormy day,” but by the page turn, there’s enough sunlight to have made a rainbow, which Little Raindrop falls through, enjoying the colors along the way. Landing in a depression on a rock, his journey continues when other drops (nonanthropomorphized) accumulate enough to make his puddle overflow. Joining a stream, he sees all kinds of animals and chases the sticks the children toss in the water. When his stream joins a river, Little Raindrop avoids the sharp rocks of the waterfalls; in the sea, he meets dolphins. Coming to rest on the sand, “Little Raindrop got hotter and hotter, until the warmth of the sun drew him up into the air,” still in the shape of a raindrop, where he joins other smiling droplets in a gray cloud. Kolanovic’s illustrations have the gritty look of crayon drawings. Little Raindrop’s surroundings match his small size; while the background details are simple, the animals he encounters all sweet—cloyingly so. Fortunately the wellspring of intellectually respectful titles on the water cycle is far from dry.

Even the youngest children don’t deserve this degree of dumbing down.