Customer Reviews

Weather (First Discovery Books)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The book Weather in the 'First Discovery Book Series' provides a fun introduction to weather that is suitable for children of a wide range of ages. It is an clever concept to use transparent flaps to demonstrate how weather can change the feel of a scene. Although my son is only two, he loves to flip the clear plastic leaves and watch the weather turn from cloudy to rainy or from frosty to snowy. He has learned many facts about weather from this book and loves to comment on what the current conditions outside are. Clearly, though, this book will be even more appropriate for an older child as it includes fun scientific facts which help them understand a few basic concepts about weather. Thus it should provide entertainment and education for many years to come.

I found this book while looking for books to use in my seasons unit. I automaticaly fell in love with it. The author does a wonderful job using plastic paper images to represent the changes that occur throughout the seasons. This helps children visualize everything from spring showers and thunderstorms, to rainbows, to the freezing of a pond in the winter. I used this book in my kindergarten class, and they were fascinated by the illustrations that went along with the literature.

Our 4 year old son started asking why we have rain, snow, cloudy and sunny weather. As an active sailor, I am constatnly confronted with the forces of nature and I explain a lot of the mysteries of weather to many adults. I tried to unveil the magic of weather to my son but he did not quite comprehend what I was talking about. After recieving this book he took great interest in looking at the pictures and playing with the transparencies on each page to better understand the environment around him. The author has created a small, informative and entertaining book with illistrations that allow children to remember through pictures. This is a great book for young children and adults to read together.

These books were originally written for a French audience, and so unless your climate matches that of France, the statements about the weather that accompanies each season will be inaccurate! "Spring is the season of mild, showery weather"...summer is a time of brief thunderstorms...beaches aren't cloudy for long...autumn is "cool" and "damp"...and it snows in the winter. In addition, like virtually all the books in this series, it contains factual errors--"no two snowflakes are alike." That's substituting folklore for fact, which is common with these books.


The good points:

-The illustrations are lovely

-There is a brief, accurate (as far as it goes) description of fog, rainbows, and snow ("ice crystals")

-There is a discussion of the seasons, even if all the details are unlikely to match your climate.

This saves it--barely--from one star.

I do love these First Discovery books with the clear overlay pages (and my 4 and 6 year-old sons do too). The "Look Inside" has the wrong "Weather" book though.

I love many of the other books in the discovery series...I just thought this one wasn't quite as concise and didn't keep it in our little ones' library. But, you may like it.