CHILDREN’S BOOKS

The Great Irish Weather Book Joanna Donnelly Gill Books €24.99 ★★★★★

When I first laid eyes on weatherwoman Joanna Donnelly’s (pictured) new book, what came to mind was the Irelandopedia series from Fatti and John Burke from a few years ago.

The cover of The Great Irish Weather Book suggests that this is going to be an easily accessible guide for children to the mysteries of rain, hail and shine.

The note from the publishing company suggests that this has ‘everything your child needs to know about the weather’. So, I’m in the zone of bringing this home to my nine-year-old and letting her loose on it just like I did with the aforementioned Burke series covering history, Ireland and general knowledge.

Then I opened the book and thought: Woah, hold on here a minute… genius and all as my nine-yearold is, this book would have some difficulty talking to that age group. It does try, though. There are little exercises that are ideal for young people… such as how to determine that the earth is round: go to the edge and walk off! But after such lighter moments, the real experiment kicks in: lie on the beach at sunset, check out the sun as it disappears below the horizon… then stand up and you’ll see it go down again. But the more I waded through it, the more it brought to mind a heavy, cloudy day than a sunny breeze through the subject that would have my young ones lapping it up. That said, there’s a lot to learn from this book about a subject about which we all seem obsessed.

The illustrations by Fuchsia MacAree are excellent, but are probably more suited to the under10 bracket than the words, which appear much more Junior Cert geography than coffee-table school at home.

With up-to-date chapters on significant weather events such as the ash cloud and Hurricane Ophelia, it has a newsy feel to it, which, added to the star rating of its author – rising every month, it would appear – should guarantee a warm front over the sales figures.