I AM WIND

Storm-swept illustrations carry a full bag of facts, myths, legends, and original poems about our planet’s winds.

“I am Wind,” Poliquin writes in a tone-establishing opener. “And I am wild.” Her free verse expressions on that theme alternate with short but clear explanations in prose and Wada’s vivid, sometimes schematic depictions of types and causes of storms, from destructive katabatic winds to hurricanes and tornados. Poliquin and Wada also explore wind in myth and history. Beginning with a gallery of dramatically expressive wind gods and demons, they weave together pithy retellings of a M­­āori origin myth, the story of how the bag of winds given to Odysseus by the wind god Aeolus caused such woe, and the tale of the “Kamikaze” winds that twice saved Japan from Mongol invasions. They also offer frightful accounts of the “Great Storm” that ravaged England in 1703 and the mile-wide tornado that blew disastrously through parts of Bangladesh in 1989. An overview of prevailing wind patterns worldwide and of the different types of sandstorms will expand readers’ perspectives on meteorological matters, as will views of various kinds of windmills and a closing look at how the 182 million tons of dust that “migrate” westward from the Sahara every year affect multiple ecosystems in both the Atlantic Ocean and the Americas. Human figures are small and are generally posed angled away from viewers, though characters of color do appear.

Broad and forceful, like its subject.