Weather Books

For the children, the art is wonderfully warm and appealing so they just keep bringing it back to be read again.

For the parents, it gets the kids to sit and be read to and, most importantly, the art is warm and comfortable enough and the prose lends itself to sound effects and play-acting so that you don't feel like fleeing the country when your child brings it up to be read for the 500th time.

All of this series are very good but, in my opinion, this is the best of them all. In fact, it's my daughter's favorite book and has been for over 6 months. Now, that's a good book!

Matt

It's hard to imagine anybody could be so unashamedly politically incorrect anymore. Fortunately Stu couldn't give a toss and romps, stumbles and blunders his way across SE Asia in a series of hilarious and self-deprecating adventures that had me laughing out aloud on my packed train ride home. CAUTION: Not to be used as a travel guide!

It is originally a Japanese book, and is a huge hit. And every (literally every) child in Korea owns this book.

This is also my baby's favorite book. It is a very simple and elegant story. The moon comes out and Cloud passes by, hiding Moon's face temporarily. My baby (13 months old) points and yells at Cloud for stepping in Moon's face. It's hilarious!

My baby loves this book so much, so I bought two of them: both Korean and English versions.

This is one of the best books that I've ordered this entire year- and I order (and read) a LOT!!!!!!
Geared towards anyone with an interest in the weather, and specifically the weather of the past century, I found it to be un-put-down-able. Different types of storms are handled under chapters of that particular type of weather, so anything you're looking for specifically is simple to find.
If you were old enough to live through a certain storm, and remember it vividly, it brings back all those memories and feelings you went through. If it's mostly all history to you, then it's downright fascinating to read about weather you'd maybe thought that New England "didn't get", then you are really in for an eye-opener! Yes, we do get tornadoes; in general, not too big or too strong.....but perhaps every other decade or so, we may have an F4 (read the book to find out what this means!) here in Massachusetts, particularly in the western areas into the seven hills of Worcester, though the eastern counties have had their share of F3's and lesser storms. I even knew a girl, two years behind me in school, who was killed in a tornado going through the Brookline Cricket Club (tennis country club) in 1973. I can remember that day, so well....there were Tornado Watches up for several of the eastern MA counties, and one turned into a Tornado Warning, which spawned that killer tornado.
This book absolutely deserves a place in your bookcase! Along with Yankee Books "New England's Disastrous Weather"!
~ DerechoLover

The most important new of this week has to do with the progressive deterioration of our environment. We have an ethical debt with the nature, we must face the challenge, joining forces, ideologies and political barriers, because if we still continue overlooking this problem, our descendents will never forgive our indifference and negligence.

The global consequences generated by the progressive temperature raising simply ignore the fact we are in the eve of new year, its warning has nothing to do with formal pronouncements of the highest government spheres. To try to conciliate the final purpose of the self sustained growing with elemental paradigms such as self determination of the nations, interference around the way every nation conceives its patterns of development seems to be an inscrutable dialogue.

The problem is we are dealing with commons issues; tornados, raising in the level of altitude of the sea, alarming decrease around our level of comfortableness, no matter you live or where are you from; the slow and progressive vanishing of our environment is much more than an original sin or a devil prize to pay in order to achieve the happiness of the people around the world.

We should leave aside the formal conventionalisms and decide ourselves once for all to understand the degree of this damage, to answer "the why" and then to assume "the how", because our tendency to overlook the problem is like to ignore the advance of an unhealthy disease, ignoring it certainly will not aid a bit to solve the problem; because the candid optimism in this case will not long forever and it will surely part of the problem in case we still shift the attention and searching in dark places, empty prayers in order to get the long expected solution; the pessimism will make its appearance and the expected nervous reactions will not be able to regard as an opinion and even though a solution.

The book is an invaluable tool to explore, analyze and reflect about this problem that concerns with all those people who live in our little planet.

This paperback of 240 pages includes 122 pages of wildflowers/weeds, etc. of this Peninsula area, all carefully illustrated with black-and-white drawings for identification with comments. A detailed description of the Peninsula weather is included with statistics on temperatures and rainfall for over 20 observing stations and shows six distinct climate zones within this 5 x 10 mi. peninsula area in southwestern Los Angeles County. (The author is a meteorologist.) Other subjects included in the book are a bird list and other wildlife in the area, geology of the area, the history of the peninsula from Indian times to recent developments, origins of names in the South Bay, names and locations of the many canyons and trails on the peninsula, and an introduction to the identification of tidepool and seashore creatures. There is an index to the plants (color coded), a bibliography, and an addendum for recently discovered plants. The book has been praised as the local "bible" for nature lovers (and sometimes for researchers). Other short chapters tell of "Escapes and Fires," of edible plants, The book has photographs from the early days, some never before published. [Above description by the author]

Children will enjoy the funny and imaginative story of a town of Troekan that is so used to rain that when it stops they are just helpless and don't know what to do. The wonderful and yet very simple illustrations complement this humorous story very well, but I just wish there were more of them for the amount of text in the book. The story, although quite lengthy for a picture book, is very well written and engaging and will keep children laughing at the comical slutions that the wise men come up with in order to get the rain back, like everybody having to stand on their head for three days, or shoot cannons at the clouds. In the end it is two children who come up with the solution that works - let the rain know how much they love it!! We will conclude that our preferrences are not necessarily based on reason but on our familiarity with the subject no matter how strange.

Hear That? How many of us have played this game w/our child(ren)? Here is a new book that takes the journey to a really silly imaginative level. As a boy and his mom wait for dad to come home there are various sounds in the house. They each take turns figuring out what the sounds could be and make a great in house adventure out of it. From butlers to walruses in the fridge and slippery banana peels you will laugh and learn. The illustrator used a unique and wonderful technique to bring the story to life. This could possibly get a Caldicott for 2001 either winner or honor.

Read this book.

The book opens: "Sun sizzled. Hair frizzled," but it might as well start out: Once upon a time there was no AC. Spinelli enshrouds the story of Lumberville's big heat wave with a nostalgic haze that's just this side of longing. The townspeople, all with names that are fun to say like Lottie Sims, the Pettibone sister, and Mailman Mike Morello, get creative in their efforts to cope with the heat. They set up lemonade stands, sleep with teabags on their eyes, wrap damp kerchiefs around their necks.
Eventually, the whole town gathers on the riverside with pillows to try to sleep. The mayor treats them to popsicles (accompanied by campaign fliers), and everyone dreams of rain - charmingly depicted by Lewin as drops of blue watercolor paint. This is a wonderful book, but -- I hope -- not a prophetic one.

Nigel explains things so you get both ends of the spectrum. Deep enough for the technician and simple enough for the novice. A great book for anyone who wants to work on his/her reefer.