Water: Discovering the Precious Resource All Around Us by Olga Fadeeva, translated from Russian by Lena Traer (Eerdman’s Books for Young Readers, 56 pages, grades 2-5). Each spread in this book asks a question about water, covering a wide range of topics from weather to oceans to pollution. How much water is there on Earth? How do rivers form? How are seas and oceans different? How powerful is water? Each question is answered with a few straightforward, engaging paragraphs and illustrated with acrylics that emphasize the blues and browns of water. This is a fun book to browse and would make an excellent addition to any elementary unit on water, although there was a sad lack of additional resources at the end.

Dive! The Story of Breathing Underwater by Chris Gall (Roaring Brook Press, 48 pages, grades 1-5). As we learned in the first book, two-thirds of the Earth is covered in water, so it’s only natural that humans would seek out ways to explore the oceans. Beginning with the ancient Greeks who used hollow reeds that allowed them to breathe while harvesting undersea sponges, Chris Gall moves on to diving bells, the bathysphere, the Aqua-Lung, and robot-controlled submersibles. He also explains what happens when humans travel deep into the ocean, and the catastrophic effects returning to the surface too quickly can have. The narrative is told through a lens of problem-solving, as various inventors sought to overcome obstacles to allow divers to go deeper and explore longer. There’s more information at the end about the oceans, how to become a diver, and the author’s personal experience with diving, as well as a glossary and additional resources. Although this has the look of a picture book and is recommended by some reviewers for kids as young as 4, there’s a lot of somewhat technical information that would most likely be more interesting for older readers.