The Storm Book by Charlotte Zolotow

The Storm Book by Charlotte Zolotow

Rating: 2.5 stars

Despite the fact that she would sleep soundly through the craziest of crazy thunderstorms during her first few years, Lorelei is now becoming a little afraid of storms.  I understand why--big claps of thunder still make me jump!  And when the lights go out, and there's no white noise whatsoever, the claps seem even louder.  And the lightning that much closer.

Therefore, I've been looking for a book that will explain storms to her.  We're huge Berenstein Bear readers (we've read them all--a zillion times each--and I could probably write a thesis on them...that's scary) so I appreciated The Berenstain Bears Count Their Blessings and the short description about what causes thunder and lightning within the story.

But when I came across The Storm Book, I got my hopes up.  Lorelei knew we had checked it out from the library, so during the last crazy storm, she said, "Hey!  Let's read The Storm Book!"  Man, I couldn't ask her to play along with my provide-me-content-for-my-blog game better if I requested it.

So we did.

But the format of the book is so NOT for children of this age that it's hard to get through it with a preschooler in your lap or in front of you.  The words are on one page, and the picture, spanning two complete pages, follows that page with the text.  So the child needs to sit through a long paragraph or two until they get something to look at.  And then you can look at the picture, which is very interesting and pretty.

It might be a good book to have on your shelf for a little later, or if you're a teacher you could easily photocopy the pages with text and read them while you hold up the image...  It is a pretty good book to use for an introduction to a lesson on storms.  But this seems like a lot of work for a parent, and for a just-ok book.  It's not bad, but...we won't be checking it out again for awhile.

Has anyone out there read any other books on storms?  I'm curious...it's easy to find books on monkeys and farm animals and trucks and princesses, but weather doesn't seem to be a popular subject!