All this little boy wants to do is take his sled outside and go ride down the hill in the snow. But it is not snowing yet. The water outside and the water inside keeps on changing but it has not begun to snow yet. It rains, there is steam from the pot, bubbles in his bathtub, and a rush of water down the stream before there is any snow. But one morning, he scrapes the frost off of his window, and he sees all of the snow ready to be played in. This book is strictly in narrative form, but the story grows with the little boy and so does the changes in water. This book could be a great tool to teach about the changes in water form and all of the different forms it takes. I would enjoy looking at all of the different forms in the book and asking older students to research and figure out how and why the water was changing from one form to the other. ( )

This book describes every state of water with lyrical text and lovely illustrations. The book describes Tony's day, a little boy who waits for snow so that he can use his sled. The book begins with Tony looking out of this window, assessing the weather. While doing so, a pot is shown on the stove, cooking soup. I loved this example being used to show steam, since it's something all of my children have experienced. At this point, one of my students nearly screamed “GROSS, oh my God, I hate soup” (this particular students has Aspergers, and is learning how to use an inside voice and keep certain comments to himself). The illustrations clearly show the window Tony is looking out of fogging up. The next page shows Tony writing his name, which I appreciated because it clearly depicts Tony as a 4/5 year old, which is the age of my students. This page is also interesting because the picture of Tony in his window writing his name is a zoomed-in frame of something in the distance. One of my students noticed this before I did, it's very small. Once pointed out, they had a difficult time understanding why Tony is illustrated twice. I told them this is just a “picture” of Tony, close-up, so we can see better. One of my students said “like one my iPad I can see closer”, which is something nearly all of my students understand. The next page shows how a tree soaks up water from the rain using capillary action. The book goes on to explain various characteristics of water, some relatable and some not. Peters uses a bath time example to explain “surging water”, which my kids definitely understood. This is what I based our science lesson on, later in the day. We filled a clear cup with water, about a half inch from the top. We made predictions, trying to decide how many pennies it would take for the cup to overflow. This lesson on water displacement went very well, I'm glad I did it in whole group because it took far more pennies than I thought it would. Admittedly, I did not do the experiment ahead of time, so even my prediction was far off. It took 98 pennies to displace the water. Our discussion was led to bath time, and how we have to be careful not to fill the bath tub to the top. One of my students told me that he was no longer allowed to run his own bath water because he fills it too high, so I knew it was a relatable topic.
The illustrations throughout the book match the text nicely, but can be confusing. The “zoom in” windows are illustrated within the other illustrations, which I needed to explain to my kids. Once someone pointed out that they saw a “tiny Tony” in the background, we had to point out both Tonys in every picture for the rest of the book.
The books ends with Tony getting his wish: a snowy day. Peters ends with “...water has a way of changing”, which is satisfying because that is how she begins the book as well.