Zap! Clap! Boom!: The Story of a Thunderstorm
by Laura Purdie Salas; illus. by Elly MacKay
Preschool    Bloomsbury    40 pp.
3/23    9781547602254    18.99
e-book ed.  9781547602261    $13.29

“No wind, / No rain, / No stormy sky.” Three children kick a bright red ball across the sloping island landscape. As they search for their ball amidst the bushes, though, they look up to see darkening clouds and the sound of “whispering leaves / in newborn / winds.” A sudden storm strikes—“ZAP! CLAP! BOOM!”—sending the children running as lightning strikes in the distance. The downpour begins while they gleefully leap through the showers on the way to find shelter. Nearly as soon as it began, the storm moves away and the island shines anew, “washed by water pressure.” MacKay’s intricate layered-paper illustrations (with lightning and rain added digitally) capture the way the storm touches every part of the island: vegetation bowing from the wind and heavy rain, ocean waters churning, and the children’s hair whipping through the electrified air. Salas’s onomatopoeic verse conveys both the ferocity of a thunderstorm and the wonder it can inspire; it begs to be read aloud, if only for that satisfying “Zap! Clap! Boom!” refrain. Back matter provides the science behind the components of a thunderstorm and shares the author’s childhood delight in afternoon storms.

From the January/February 2023 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.