Non-Fiction Links to Fiction

Visit Alyson Beecher on Wednesdays for Non-Fiction Picture Books at Kidlit Frenzy.  Thanks to her hosting and sharing and those who add their posts, you can discover and celebrate terrific nonfiction picture books!  I always learn from these books, am happy that they are more and more available today for children, for everyone!

            These two books celebrate water, one is full of the facts in a quick and fun look at all the places it can be found. The other, though an imagined story, fills us with smiles, too, with just one thing, a puddle, and that delight found where one can SPLASH!

               Antoinette Portis choose few, but perfect, words to show all kinds of ways to discover water with one young girl, Zoe, telling this tale of water. Simply brushed shades of blues and greens with white bring water right into the picture! Beginning with a faucet, "Hey water! I know you! You're all around." and experiencing the actions as water sprays up in a sprinkler, down in a shower, gurgles in a stream. Pictures focus on the water feature with the word (like 'stream' or 'fog') incorporated into the illustrations with just-right additions, like people and trees by a stream, a whale in the ocean, and lest we forget, a dewdrop on a blade of grass. The double-page spread describing fog is lovely to see, "You drift in the air and hide/the world." It's a poetic way to show water's omnipresence, including ice and snow! There are three added pages of information that explain "water forms", "the water cycle", and "conserving water". It's a terrific book for the jumping off of a study of water.

          With only a focus on one puddle, this time on a school playground, a large one surrounded by smaller 'sisters and brothers, so dainty and sweet,/so shallow'. Soon gone by 'sudden sunshine', this puddle also worries about more rain, a poodle "piddle" in the puddle, and a shoe with two toes showing. More experiences include a duck, being alone, and the final reflection, a surprise. Richard Jackson's words bounce through in quick time as Chris Raschka's illustrations fill the page with color and the slightly distorted view a puddle gives. It's a clever and imaginative book that will be fun to include in a study of water or after a rainstorm, plus considering different perspectives.