WHEN CLOUD BECAME A CLOUD

A cloud experiences the ups and downs of the water cycle.

In a minimalist narrative attached to bright, very simple cartoon scenes in which everything from our nearest star to the tiniest water droplets sports a smiley face, Hodgson personifies but otherwise accurately represents natural processes. Sun (“I’m hot stuff!”) warms a lake so that evaporated drops rise and gather into Cloud, which, driven by a friend named Wind that “loves to blow warm air to cold places,” passes over mountains and under airplanes. When droplets cool off enough, they link up into geometrical flakes (“This is snow much fun!”), pack in until they fall as raindrops, or rub together to build up an electrical charge: “BOOM.” Clouds can gather from all over, then split up again (“Adiós!” “Sayonara!” “Jal gayo!”) after a storm while Sun shows off “a neat trick”: “RAINBOW!” The fleecy, blue-eyed wanderer returns at last to the lake…just in time for a meet-cute with a newly formed, pink-eyed compatriot. “Hi! I’m Cloud. What’s your name?” Younger cloud watchers drawn by the artless tone and the (literally) vivacious illustrations, which resemble tissue-paper collage enhanced with occasional brushwork, will be well set up to dive into deeper treatments of the topic, such as Antonia Banyard and Paula Ayer’s Water Wow! illustrated by Belle Wuthrich (2016). The small human figures visible in some scenes appear diverse. (This book was reviewed digitally with 9-by-14.6-inch double-page spreads viewed at 90% of actual size.)

A breezy, buoyant bucketful of atmospheric basics.