Written On the Wind

I wrote the Grade 4 reader The Wind at Work 2+ years ago. Last fall I checked on my author copies with the project manager after remembering the book was supposed to exist and finding it on the publisher's Web site. That took some doing, let me tell you. The program title had changed since my involvement, and I really had to dig. Searching by title doesn't work (*sniff*), nor does searching by author (*double sniff*). In fact, you can't even get to it by selecting "ISBN" in the search field and typing the number straight from a copy of the book in your hand. But, to be fair, the customer is the educator looking to fill a specific yet hefty curriculum need, and titles and authors of the student books in the program meant to fill the void are unimportant.

Clearly, since I have the ISBN, I did finally receive my copies. All 2 of 'em. Thought I'd share a quick peek at the cover and contents here, as I'm still figuring out how to reconfigure my author site.

It's a spare work at just 32 pages, but it touches on a nice variety of windy topics, if I do say so myself. And the photos and illustrations look great. Here's an excerpt from Chapter 1: "What Is Wind?"

Wind is the natural movement of air. But what causes the air to move and the winds to blow? Where does the wind come from?

If you said that wind comes from the sun, you are right! The sun creates wind as it warms the earth. Wind is all about hot and cool air trading places with each other.

First the sun's rays shine on the earth's surface. As land soaks up the rays, it gets warmer. The rays that hit water instead of land are reflected, or bent, back up. This warms the air and causes it to spread out and rise.

As the warm air rises, cooler air moves in. The cooler air fills the space that the warm air left behind. That movement of air is what we feel and what we know as wind.

All in all, I am pleased with the finished product. It was an interesting topic to tackle, too — and the staff is always great to work with — so I enjoyed the process. If you ever see it in person, though, and wonder why I used the wonky verb tense in the introduction's dream-sequence bit, my answer to you is, "I didn't!"