Who Has Seen the Wind?
BY CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
Cassi is holding a tiny swift in the palm of her hand. We see the flock swirling through the sky above her.
"The land warms the air making it less dense and lighter. And being lighter, it rises. Cooler air above the ocean rushes in and the wind awakes! ... the tiny bird rises from Cassi's hands and, like a drop of water thrown into a river, disappears into the fleet-winged flock."
The wind continues on its way and we see it through the changes and actions it makes such as waves on the ocean, a wild cyclone, shifting sands of the desert, and monuments of carved rock. Meanwhile the little swift flies on and on eventually arriving in the courtyard of a house in China. She finds a safe place, lays her eggs, and once the new chicks grow big enough the mother bird joins her flock following the wind back to Cassi.
The language in my earlier quote shows you the lyricism of this writing.
Here are some other phrases I love:
The swifts know the path through the "pathless sky."
"This pale revolving envelope of air ... "
"The wind is the ceaseless shaper of the Earth."
"The wind whips the waves, cresting each one - like a conjuror's trick - with wild white horses."
Wind is a natural phenomena we experience every day but how can it be explained (with illustrations) in a picture book? Graham Baker-Smith has achieved this in a truly special book which follows on from his previous The Rhythm of the Rain. I highly recommend this book for all school libraries. I was pleased to see this beautiful book is not very expensive. Take a look here to see some of the illustrations.
Other picture books about the wind:
Here are some lesson ideas if you are wanting to develop a unit of work around the topic of wind.
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