What is the Water Cycle?

[Starred review]. What Is the Water Cycle? is a simple, well illustrated guide, with straightforward language and solid information about the visible and invisible stages from clouds to precipitation to surface water to evaporation and back to clouds (note that groundwater is not included in this text). A family of elephants serves as main characters in the water transformation process, while photos of ponds, puddles, snowflakes, raindrops, clouds, and waves all add appealing visual interest to the processes described. While this is only minimally a book of activities, I particularly like the illustrated featured suggestion for parents or teachers: “On a warm day, pour a cup of water onto dry pavement and quickly outline it with chalk. Check the puddle every ten minutes and draw a new outline around it.” This book, like others in its series, Weather Wise, refreshingly lack the sorts of annoyingly enthusiastic adjectives and over abundant exclamation points which so often litter children’s books. Instead, this book simply describes the water cycle (“Some of the water that the elephant sprayed has moved from a puddle to a cloud to the ocean.” p. 16), with an array of facts and perspectives (“All the water on Earth has been here since the planet first formed.” p. 20). I finished the book with whole new respect for the process, as well as great respect for Ellen Lawrence’s ability to tell a complex and fascinating story.