Wind Is a Dance

Recently these lines from a classic poem by Christina Rossetti came to mind:

Who has seen the wind?

Neither you nor I.

But when the trees bow down their heads,

The wind is passing by.

In Wind Is a Dance, author Shumaker has created a lovely modern interpretation of this idea in a large, airy-feeling picture book that is, in part, ‘for the feeling’ and, in part, ‘for the learning’.

Wind is a dance – a dance of air.

Warm air leaps high, while cool air bows low.

Day by day, fast or slow, wind changes.

There is a series of brief passages about different kinds and strengths of wind and how they show themselves. Each spread includes both a poetic description and an informational bubble about the type of wind mentioned. We move from gentle breezes, to tailwinds and headwinds, to blizzards and other more ferocious examples of wind.

Swifter, stronger…wind is a train –

Rumbling straight down its track.

Breaking branches,

tumbling trees,

until finally,

it

runs

out

of

steam.

The layout of the text on this page echoes that of a poem while the reader learns from the box on the opposite page:

Derecha is Spanish for “straight ahead”. As a name for
a storm derecho means a very fast long windstorm that follows

a band of quick-moving thunderstorms in a straight line.

The last pages of the book reiterate the idea of wind as a dance, and readers are invited to look out and describe the wind that they can see and feel at that moment.

Back matter includes detailed definitions of various wind effects, a table of wind speeds and the terms attached to them, and a brief bibliography.

Prolific Quebecoise picture book artist Bisaillon has contributed illustrations full of light and dominated by sky shades of blue and grey. Brighter colours accentuate the activities of humans caught up in the wind and the backdrops of the natural world that the winds blow through. The luminous mixed media used suggest cloud and water taking to the air while, on the ground, people and houses and trees have more hard-edged forms.

Although not a candidate for a storytime programme, Wind Is a Dance would be perfect for that Grade 2 unit on weather. A solid addition to the primary bookshelves in both school and public libraries.