Water Dance

From School Library Journal
Grade 1-6. How does water dance? From rain, to river, to lake, to sea, to cloud, with half a dozen more sidesteps in the circle. Each step is dramatized here with one of Locker's romantic Catskills wilderness landscape?or seascape?paintings. Changes in season, atmosphere, time of day, or weather alter the light and the palette, which is fairly subdued until the final crimson sunset. Each facing page has a haiku-like text describing the specific phenomenon ("In thousands of shapes I reappear/high above the earth in the blue sky./I float./I drift.") followed by an italicized identification ("I am the clouds"). This riddlelike format could spark reader interaction. The paintings reappear, twice postage-stamp size, on the final three pages, each accompanied by a scientist's brief explanation of the water cycle's stages. This book is a happy marriage of art and science, although there is never a doubt as to the dominant partner.?Patricia Lothrop-Green, St. George's School, Newport, RICopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Gr. 3^-5. "Some people say that I am one thing. / Others say that I am many. / Ever since the world began / I have been moving in an endless circle . . . I am the rain." So begins the text of this unusual introduction to the water cycle. The book features a free-verse narrative illustrated by landscape and seascape paintings that show water in various forms referred to in the text: "I am the waterfall," "I am the clouds," or "I am the thunderhead." At the end of the book each picture appears in miniature accompanied by a paragraph explaining that particular phase of the water cycle. Those attracted to Locker's handsome artwork will find many beautiful and dramatic paintings here. Teachers may want to try this as a different approach to the water cycle. Although CIP places the book in the fiction collection, librarians may find it more useful in nonfiction collections, whether science or poetry, or shelved with Locker's other picture books. Carolyn Phelan


From Kirkus Reviews
Water in its many guises and the scientific process that commands the shape it takes--liquid, solid, and gas--are the subjects of this collection of paintings. A first-person narration covers the journey of water on its circular path, as streams, rivers, and oceans evaporate into fog and clouds, only to return to earth as rain: ``I am one thing./I am many things./I am water./This is my dance through our world.'' Of most interest but relegated to the back of the book are endnotes by Candace Christiansen (with Locker, Sky Tree, 1995) explaining scene-by-scene the various phenomena the painter's brush has recorded, e.g., a brilliant scarlet sunset is the result of low-angled sunlight passing through layers of water vapor. Locker's paintings and text are poetic, but both have a languid, slightly static quality to them. Unlike Sky Tree, in which science facts were incorporated into the body of the text, the paintings don't illustrate the text in any true sense, but sit on the page. (Picture book/nonfiction. 4-10) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
Travel with author-illustrator Thomas Locker and follow our planet's most precious resource--water--on its daily journey through our world.



Card catalog description
Water speaks of its existence in such forms as storm clouds, mist, rainbows, and rivers. Includes factual information on the water cycle.


About the Author
THOMAS LOCKER has written and illustrated many award-winning books for children. He lives in Stuyvesant, New York, at the edge of the Hudson River.



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