The Snowflake

December 1, 2003
Gr 1-5-A beautiful take on the water cycle. Waldman traces the journey of a single drop of water throughout the year, with each month receiving its own spread. The water begins as a snowflake that melts into a droplet, flows into the ground, bubbles up in a spring, flows into a farm's irrigation system, evaporates into the morning fog, becomes part of a cloud, rains down, enters a plumbing system, washes a little girl's face, flows out to the ocean, gets swept onto the shore and evaporates into the sky to become a snowflake once more. The clear text is undeniably lyrical: "It flowed past fields of waving sea grasses, over corals of many colors, and into the mouth of a great striped fish." The real stunners here, though, are the dazzling, cool-toned paintings that convey the wonders of nature with delicate precision. A must for libraries and science classrooms.-Kathleen Kelly MacMillan, Maryland School for the Deaf, Columbia

Copyright 2003 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2004
A simple, poetic text and elegantly expressive illustrations chart the yearlong course of one water droplet and end with thought-provoking musings about water. Expand the concepts by asking youngsters to pick one month and write a story from the droplet's point of view.

Copyright 2004 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2003
K-Gr. 2. This beautifully illustrated picture book follows a single droplet of water as it moves and changes throughout one year. With a double-page spread for each month, the story traces the droplet's journey from snowflake to mountain pond to underground stream to river to irrigation system to cloud to reservoir to city water system to bathroom sink to drain pipe to cloud and back to snowflake. A few sentences of text on each spread comment on the droplet's form, travels, and surroundings. More effective and memorable, though, are the subtle hues and varied compositions of Waldman's paintings in this unusually handsome presentation of the water cycle.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)