The Wonder of the Wet Stuff! Hey, Water! by Antoinette Portis

Water! I know you!

You're all around.

What does water do?

Let me count the ways, says the award-winning author Antoinette Portis, in her literary exploration of the ways of water.

Water flows down from a shower and up from a sprinkler. It wanders as a trickle or as a stream or river... until it arrives at some sea or another, and we name it... THE oceans where...

... you cover most of the earth--

In its more compact form, water can be a lake or a pool, a puddle, or even a tiny drop of dew on a leaf or a wee tear in your eye. But all water comes from tiny droplets that condense into a gray fog and ...

... drift in the air and hide the world.

And when water comes together in condensation, it fall as rain, freeze hard as a rock, good for ice skating, or feathery soft as snow, good for a snowman with a scarf and carrot nose.

You're hiding in this funny guy... and you're hiding in me, too!

Water is important, necessary for all living things, says author-illustrator Portis in her look at all things liquid--(and, we must add, a solid or a gas, which this magical, changeable substance can be), in her latest non-fiction picture book, Hey, Water!(Holiday House, 2019). In simple but lyrical wording, Portis's skillful essay on the nature and use of water can be as enticing as its subject, useful as a beginning reader book, a lovely artistic expression of the wonders of water itself in all its forms, and a great introduction, with its useful appendix, to nonfiction and the water cycle for primary science units.

"Both school and public libraries will want this striking first science book on their shelves," says School Library Journal's starred review.