BookDragon Blog

Ready for an around-the-world, invigorating, aquatic tour? Readers: get ready to be refreshed, guided by Pat Mora’s verses and Meilo So’s artistry…

“Water fascinates me, perhaps because I’ve spent most of my life in the Southwest desert region of the United States,” Mora writes in her “Author’s Note.” The “enthusiasm,” she shares with her water expert archaeologist husband, “about the wonder of water and the importance of valuing this glorious resource” gets a bilingual shout-out in both English and Spanish. All across the world – from Zambia and Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls to an Icelandic geyser, from the Grand Canal in Venice to the canals of Holland, from an oasis in the Sahara to an island village in Greece – Mora writes of rolling, rising, gliding, plunging, whispering water.

Water can be dangerous: “Blown by the wind, / water sails high. / Tumbling cloud plumes curl through the air.”  Water can be lulling: “Slow into rivers, / water slithers and snakes / through silent canyons at twilight and dawn.” Water can be destructive: “In storms, water plunges / in thunder’s brash roar, / races through branches from lightning’s white flash.” Water can be restorative: “Then water rests, / drowsy in reservoirs, / its glistening silence shimmers like stars.”

To each of Mora’s expressive lyrics, So adds an extensive palette of colors, images, details … from curious cats exploring the buildings and walkways along a foggy canal, to the waiting faces of colorfully-garbed water-drawers above the round opening of a village well, to two colorfully scarved children skipping over a fall forest river, to a mother gently rocking her baby beside a desert night oasis, to a family savoring ripe watermelon on top of splashing boulders in the middle of a rushing stream.

“Around our round world, / water rolls, water rises / under golden sun, under white moon”: Mora and So’s wet playground awaits.

Readers: Children

Published: 2014