Review of the Day: The Noisy Puddle by Linda Booth Sweeney, ill. Miki Sato

The Noisy Puddle: A Vernal Pool Through the Seasons
By Linda Booth Sweeney
Illustrated by Miki Sato
Owlkids Books
$18.95
ISBN: 9781771475310
Ages 407
On shelves now

The notion of the readaloud nonfiction book is still a relatively recent concept. Of course, I like to hope that things are changing on that front. Maybe in library school, or when library workers receive on-the-job training on how to conduct storytimes, newbies are told to always try to include a nonfiction book to read once in a while. Maybe. The trouble is, of course, finding such books. Just as not every fictional picture book adapts well to being read to large groups, so too are nonfiction picture books sort of in the same boat. There are also a lot fewer nonfiction picture books to choose from, considering how many are published in a given year, compared to their fictional counterparts. That’s probably one of the many reasons a book like The Noisy Puddle is as valuable as it is. Not only does it read well out loud in a one-on-one setting, a large group of kids could benefit from its text as well. Add in the pertinent and interesting information almost never covered in other books for kids and the incredible and eclectic art of Miki Sato, and you have yourself a book as valuable to a classroom as it is to a storytime. A rarity in the field.

“In the deep, damp forest, / after the snow, / one lone goose, / one lone crow, / yellow daffodils all in a row.” Into this forest walk a girl and a boy. The girl, older, leads the boy to “a noisy puddle, cold and clear.” Inside life abounds. There are wood frogs and ducks, eggs and spotted salamanders, pond skaters and toads and turtles. But “HURRY! HURRY! Don’t be long. / Once summer comes, it will be … / gone.” Don’t worry, though. After summer the rains will fall in autumn and create a puddle, soon covered in winter’s ice. Hiding and waiting are creatures “waiting to grow” or “waiting for showers” until at long last the spring comes once more and the noisy puddle, full of the sound of different creatures, reappears.

Glance at the publication page of this book and you won’t learn much about how it was made. Sometimes books for kids will discuss the medium the illustrator was working in. This book is not be overly forthcoming about Miki Sato’s art, but fortunately her website does have a bit more information. Her site calls her, “a mixed media illustrator who uses a variety of papers and fabrics to create layered, three-dimensional illustrations. She enjoys experimenting with new textures, and incorporates materials such as embroidery thread, glass beads, cotton balls, sand, and more into her artwork. She spends her days cutting and gluing tiny pieces of her illustration together.” I’ve certainly seen her books before, but there’s a level of sophistication and complexity in The Noisy Puddle that suggests that Ms. Sato is taking her art a step further. I think a lot of this change in her art has to do with shine. It’s so difficult to convey wetness solely with paper art, so right from the title page she establishes that this isn’t going to be the kind of cut paper art you’re used to. The clear plastic wrap water? I get that. But it’s the shiny throat of a peeper sitting beside that water that really catches your eye. Inside, Sato mixes her already adept ability to wring emotions out of paper in the relationship between the older girl and younger boy with the mixed media of the woods and nature. The end result is this incredible backing and forthing between panels of forestry and of the humans exploring it.

Additionally, there are artistic sequences in this book that I don’t even know how to make sense of. Pretty early on you get to a section that reads, “Wood frogs quack. / Ducks clown. / Fairy shrimp swim upside down.” In the image Sato uses that crinkly plastic wrap to make the water look realistic, with the frogs and shrimp and ducks all forefronted. But what absolutely kills me about this is that the two humans are out of focus in the distance, looking at all of this from afar. Not just them either, but some of the more distant trees and even leafless bushes are a bit fuzzy as well. I cannot for the life of me figure out how Sato accomplished this shot. Did she create the background images and shoot them fuzzy, then combine them (either on the page or later on a computer) with the clear art of the animals? Or is this a Bambi multiplane type of situation where the two humans truly are farther away from the pool, and so Sato was able to make the depth of focus work more naturally to her advantage? The book is silent on the subject. All I know is that there is a lot of work and artistry going on here, and this is just ONE page out of at least 32.

The art? It’s an easy draw. I don’t want to downplay it. As I just showed you, there are layers to Miki Sato’s literal layers of art here. But of course when the art is this good, there’s a danger of not quite realizing how accomplished Linday Booth Sweeney’s writing is as well. And Sweeney didn’t make any of this easy for herself. She essentially decided to convey a not particularly well-publicized natural phenomenon (vernal pools) through the art of rhyme. And as someone who has read some truly terrible rhyming children’s books in my life, this was a bold choice. The remarkable thing is that Sweeney isn’t just good at the whole rhyming thing. She’s great at it! It’s difficult to avoid the pleasure that comes of reading lines like, “Here are the buttonbush staring to bloom / Here are the butterflies, zip and zoom!” When I said that the book was a good readaloud, I didn’t necessarily mean because the book rhymed, but it certainly doesn’t hurt!

Then there’s the fact that Sweeney chose vernal pools as her subject in the first place. I’m sort of impressed that her publisher went for it. Publishers are sometimes inclined to adhere more closely to the pre-existing school curriculum subject matter. You’d be far more likely to encounter a nonfiction picture book about the water cycle, say, or the metamorphosis of butterflies than a deep dive (no pun intended) on vernal pools. And yes, I’ll admit it. Until I became a children’s librarian I didn’t even really know what a vernal pool was. Sweeney not only explains what it is with the simplest rhymes, she also includes some delicious backmatter that pleased me particularly. The standard line with backmatter is that if it’s significantly more interesting than the book then you’re doing it wrong. This backmatter is definitely interesting too, but in a way that’s wholly different from the rest of the title. Here we get a more in-depth explanation of what precisely is happening to all the creatures that live in the pond once it starts drying up. There’s also a marvelous visual selection of many of the animals that live in or around the pool while it exists.

I get regular requests to come up with lists of rhyming nonfiction for teachers, and I’ve always kind of wondered why people sought such books out. Do they not trust themselves (or is it the books?) to make informational titles sound just as fascinating to young listeners as any old fairy tale? I can whip up a list of rhyming nonfiction books on command, but if I’m being honest with myself, a lot of the books I can come up with are merely so-so. Fine, but not fantastic. In short, they’re no Noisy Puddle. This book literally has everything you would want in a science and nature title for younger readers. It’s engaging, rhyming, keeps its text and subject matter appropriate for lower grades, pops visually on virtually every page, and contains ample backmatter to support everything it says. It is, in short, a book one cannot miss. Beautiful from tip to tail and back again.

On shelves now.

Source: Checked out copy from local library.

Filed under: Best Books, Best Books of 2024, Review 2024, Reviews