Shel Silverstein, Lois Lowry, and Roald Dahl.

ME: Who were your favorite authors/illustrators when you were a child? I’m so happy to have her here to share her thoughts with us. She is kind and generous and loving and a super smart mentor! Both were named Junior Library Guild selections. She’s published more than 50 short stories for magazines and digital markets, and is the author of One Plastic Bag: Isatou Ceesay and the Recycling Women of the Gambia, and Water is Water. A passionate advocate for literacy and leader in the movement to encourage diversity in books, Miranda is a doer, not just a dreamer. Friends told me about a website called RateYourStory that was run by a writer named Miranda Paul, where you could get a manuscript looked at by professionals – for free! I went, I saw, I fell in love…with the site, the service and Miranda herself. Follow this, if possible, with a group walk around the block to talk about where the water is.I met today’s Will Write for Cookies author a couple of years ago when I first discovered this incredible kid lit community. Lists of sources and children’s materials for further reading are included. Watercolor scenes invite close examination-brother chases sister off the school bus with a garter snake neighbor kids armed with snowballs sneak around the corner of the house to ambush snowman makers sister’s butterfly kite gets stuck in a tree a novice skater crashes into a snowbank. Younger children can easily follow pictures and poem to connect a puddle soaking the roots of a tree with the apples pressed into cider in the next spread older listeners and independent readers can turn to the back pages and learn about “seepage,” “uptake,” and the watery composition of the apples that are squeezed for their liquid.

While the states of water are described in everyday language throughout the linked verses, a concluding note, with thumbnails referring to specific points in the text, offers additional information and more precise terminology. it falls down.” Here they arrive at school just in time for the “patter. Twisty./ Where is the town?/ Fog is fog unless. they form low.” A page turn moves the cloud-gazing kids from summer into autumn, where they stand among fallen leaves and wait for their school bus to emerge over a fog-banked rise: “Misty. Vapor that cools high in the sky takes on fascinating shapes: “A dragon in a wagon?/A crow kneading dough?/ Clouds are clouds unless. As a sister and brother pass through a cycle of seasons, occupied with play, school, and family time, the water that nurtures their world undergoes continual change.

Water Is Water by Miranda Paul