Drip! Drop!: How Water Gets to Your Tap Book

Jo Jo and her zany dog Willy explain the water cycle and introduce experiments about water filtration, evaporation, and condensation.

School Library Journal

K-Gr 2-This brightly illustrated picture book enters an already crowded field of titles about this topic. After a brief explanation of the water cycle, the author explains how reservoir water is filtered, mixed with alum to remove dirt, made "clean and safe" at the water-treatment plant, and sent through pipes to homes and buildings. The writing is clear and concise, the science simple and correct. Appropriately for this age group, there is no attempt to explain why water evaporates when it is warmed or why dirt sticks to alum at the waterworks. A small African-American girl and her pup add comments and spark to the scientific text. The illustrations look like slick, airbrushed, Saturday-morning cartoons, which make this offering less attractive than Joanna Cole's The Magic School Bus at the Waterworks (Scholastic, 1986) or Melvin Berger's Water, Water Everywhere (Ideals, 1995). The three appended experiments are old favorites that can be found in many sources, but one of the explanations is misleading. It seems to indicate that warmed water in a closed container does not evaporate, when, in fact, it does evaporate but cannot escape into the atmosphere. An additional purchase.-Ellen Heath, Orchard School, Ridgewood, NJ Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.