Booklist "The "I Spy Up in the Sky" Series takes an unusual approach—short, rhyming stanzas—to relate information about the sun, moon, stars, and, in this volume, clouds. After a few pages introducing how clouds are made and what form precipitation can take (rain, hail, sleet, and snow), Orr offers up a two-page spread of pictures and text for each kind of cloud. Stratocumulus, altocumulus, and nimbostratus are just three of the surprisingly technical clouds covered, which begs the question: Is poetry really the best way to communicate information about these formations? Probably not, though there will be some who respond to the delivery method: “They form in long rows, / With small water drops; / They bring in cold fronts, / And warm weather stops.” The photos are big and bright (or dark, depending on the weather), and the back matter features an extremely helpful chart of all the clouds together, a glossary, an index, and a list of further reading."
--Daniel Kraus, Booklist, October 1, 2011 School Library Journal Gr 1-3-In a rare pairing of color photographs and rhymed verse, these deceptively elementary-looking volumes introduce clouds and other sky phenomena. Orr lays out each topic in simple, if often tortured, quatrains ("Waves roll in, then glide out/The Moon's sea duty/Pulls them by gravity,/Part of nature's beauty"), enriched with references to 10 kinds of clouds, lunar phases and eclipses, the solar corona and sunspots, and the life cycle of a star. Captions and labels on many of the photos kick the informational level up a notch; for example, in Stars a spread names all of the Pleiades stars and another identifies the stars of Ursa Major. Each volume closes with a fact section (or, in the case of Clouds, a visual recap). Children will find these titles easy to read but challenging to absorb; older reluctant readers and ESL students may find them appealing, too. (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.