Water Dance by Thomas Locker, Thomas Locker (Illustrator)

From the Publisher

Travel with author-illustrator Thomas Locker and follow our planet's most precious resource—water—on its daily journey through our world.

Children's Literature

Every page is breathtaking, worthy of framing, in this collection of oil paintings, thick with color and mood. Tranquil and poetic, the narration consists of brief passages that celebrate each body of water, flowing smoothly as a current over the pages. Seascapes and landscapes appear dressed in rainbow and mist. At the conclusion of this treasure, detailed information on the water cycle appears next to a miniature of each painting.

Children's Literature

If you are looking for a New Age children's book, this is it. Each two page spread introduces a form of water (mist, stream, rain, etc.) via a short poem which is centered on the left-hand page, and a full page reproduction of an oil painting on the right-hand page. For example, the mist poem reads: "Drawn upward / by warm sunlight, / in white-silver veils / I rise into the air ./ I disappear . /I am the mist." All of this is set on cream-colored paper. The paintings are New Age on the one hand, but also are somewhat reminiscent of the Hudson River School works.

Kirkus Reviews

Water in its many guises and the scientific process that commands the shape it takes—liquid, solid, and gas—are the subjects of this collection of paintings.

A first-person narration covers the journey of water on its circular path, as streams, rivers, and oceans evaporate into fog and clouds, only to return to earth as rain: "I am one thing./I am many things./I am water./This is my dance through our world." Of most interest but relegated to the back of the book are endnotes by Candace Christiansen (with Locker, Sky Tree, 1995) explaining scene-by-scene the various phenomena the painter's brush has recorded, e.g., a brilliant scarlet sunset is the result of low-angled sunlight passing through layers of water vapor. Locker's paintings and text are poetic, but both have a languid, slightly static quality to them. Unlike Sky Tree, in which science facts were incorporated into the body of the text, the paintings don't illustrate the text in any true sense, but sit on the page.

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