HOW DOES WATER MOVE AROUND?

An introduction to the water cycle designed for a multilevel audience.

Cued not only by changes in type size and text density, but also language ranging from transparently silly questions (“Why do clouds start to rain? Is it because giants are crying in the sky?”) to explanations of, for example, the role of plant stomata in transpiration, this overview aims wide and combines clear explanations with repetition to make its shower of basic facts easy to absorb. In Bassani’s cartoon illustrations, a cast diverse in age, race, and species poses next to helpful diagrams, demonstrates ways of conserving water around the house, and encourages young hands-on sorts to follow directions for constructing a simple “water cycle in a bag” project. Aside from supplying only a lower range for the weight of an average cumulus cloud (1.1 million pounds, but some published estimates come in at much higher numbers), Hayes is careful with specifics. But readers expecting an answer to one character’s question, “Where does all this water come from?” or a link—which the author fails to draw in discussing why we need to conserve it—between droughts and climate change will be frustrated by the lack of leads to deeper resources. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A methodical, if not exceptional, addition to the abundant stream of books on the topic.