The first thing I noticed as I leafed through the book was how colourful and gleaming new it was. The book was well designed, with colourful captions, great, vivid pictures and tonnes of witticisms, facts, and bytes crammed in, yet, despite all the things that were fit into the pages, the layout was organized and neat. When I first received this book, I was wary. The topic of weather really didn’t interest me. But as I slowly read each word, I realized that this book was actually all right and got my attention. Weather is now a bit more interesting.
     Another entertaining thing was that the author managed to add in world records, experiments, and a helpful glossary. This book had a good mix of ingredients. Variety, I find, is a main necessity for a good, graspable book. The experiments were all right, medium easy and informative, but if older readers were performing them, I believe they would much rather have more challenging and riskier activities to perform. However, I am grateful the author had the patience to squeeze in some hands-on parts. My favourite part of the book was the world records section. Did you know, for example, that on May 5, 1987, green rain fell over Moscow? These “bytes” of wacky information were absolutely great. There were a couple of things, however, that were not-so-great. I didn’t appreciate some of the boring facts and paragraphs about weather that I have never encountered and probably never will. But, the fun, unbelievable records and some of the intriguing pictures made up for the tedious paragraphs.
     My overall impression of the book is that it’s a fun, easy, entertaining book about maybe the most boring subject that a children’s author could write about. Out of 10, I would probably give this book a 7.5 because it was fascinating, but it also had some dry, boring parts.

(Originally published in the Spring 2000 issue of YES Mag.)