Zap! Clap! Boom! The Story of A Thunderstorm, a demystifying read aloud

Pre-k through middle elementary school kids know who their El Guapo is. It’s the thunderstorm. Those ages can be as happy as a clam in a tide pool but their mood will shift like the sands when they see black clouds on the horizon. Zap! Clap! Boom! The Story of A Thundstorm is an illustrated book that those ages, especially the younger ones, will enjoy. Older folks are able to appreciate the fringe benefits that are associated with thunderstorms. That’s one thing that the book does a great job of incorporating to those young ages. They have difficulty seeing how the big noise, torrents of rain and white-hot light can be beneficial at all. However, they can be and Zap! Clap! Boom! The Story of a Thunderstorm does a great job at illustrating to kids that everything has a purpose.  

Zap! Clap! Boom! The Story of A Thunderstorm is the sort of illustrated book that is read-aloud magic. It’s very easy to imagine reading this to a group of pre-k or kindergarten students. The short, poetic text ebbs and flows like waves that are about to pound the coastal shores. Some of the pages only have five words that build up to the next page which has more traditional prose in its appearance. When the text gets rolling in earnest it feels like poetry, but doesn’t have the traditional rhyming flow of every-other-line ending with the same sounds.

This is big-kid, smart poetry that gets those younger ages to think beyond the simpler rhymes that they’re accustomed to. While some of the stanzas do have familiar words, it’s more of them that have rhymes in uneven placement. The first and last word in a four-sentence stanza might rhyme, the two short sentences on two pages might rhyme or one page might not have any at all.

The book opens with a trio of kids playing on top of a mountain island playing with a bright red kickball. There are three goats minding their own business while walking around the peak nibbling on some grass. As the kids are playing their hair starts to wisp about on their heads due to the wind picking up. Off in the distance, a flash of lightning makes its first appearance. As the kids run back home, the goats continue to scamper around the crags looking for greenery.

All living creatures seek shelter as the storm gets closer. Eventually, the wind ebbs, the rains stop their horizontal activity and the lightning moves to the other side of the island. The children cautiously exit their house, the goats have more pep in their step and everything on the island is cleansed.

This island is clean, to paraphrase Zelda Rubinstein’s character Tangina from Poltergeist. Zap! Clap! Boom! is part of the vein diagram where the perfect style of art is paired with just the right amount of text. The art in the book by Elly MacKay jumps off of the page. They’re not illustrations, they’re layered pieces of art that are photographed on a background. Her illustrations, for lack of a better term, are much like the way Ratatouille explained that the best-tasting dishes are via the combination, love and ingredients that go into them.

The layers in the book’s art aren’t obvious, but it just looks like the 2D pages have something going on. It is much like an exquisite meal has flavors that add up to a creation that’s greater than the sum of its parts. With that image in your mind, let’s envision a group of pre-k and kindergarten students gathered around for story time. Those kids won’t know the work that went into creating each page. However, they’ll see the blues turn to purples, then black clouds darker than a thousand midnights. The blackness is only accented by zig zag white lines that are augmented with just enough yellow to that illustrate the rapidly discharged electricity in the sky. The art in Zap! Clap! Boom! The Story of A Thunderstorm will keep readers hooked on a subject that they don’t like or fear. It’ll assist them in casually chatting about the subject, and hopefully help them in realizing that thunderstorms happen for a reason. The adults who are reading it will have numerous opportunities to ham it up and really sell this illustrated book.

 Zap! Clap! Boom! The Story of A Thunderstorm is available on Bloomsbury Children’s Books, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing.

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