HURRICANE WOLF

A hurricane is calling at the door. “Like the big, bad wolf,” says Noah, the young narrator in Paterson’s rousing and informative story of how to contend with heavy weather. Noah and his parents collect supplies—flashlights, food, water, first-aid kit—and batten the hatches as the storm gathers around them. Paterson’s watercolors bevel the storm’s scariness, but she uses the medium well, both as portent—scudding clouds, the wind getting serious, the harbingers of thunder and lightning—and in conveying the pure, unbridled energy of the hurricane: the roof rattling, the wind snarling, the lonesome boot cartwheeling past the storm-shutter’s peephole. Lots of sound advice salts the story (and is summarized in fact sheets at the end of the book), which will make kids feel less helpless, if in no less awe, before the storm’s brute force. (Picture book. 5-8)