Touch the Earth

PreS-Gr 2—Follow the White Feather Flier around the globe to discover places that need help with access to water. This adventure is designed to help readers "touch the earth" by learning how to take care of it. The story includes a place where people need water to drink, a deep ocean that needs to be cleaned so that fish will return, a parched desert, and a town that needs its water filtered so people can drink it. With soft, colorful illustrations and simple language, this work is attractive, but the heavy message about the importance of keeping water clean and accessible is not presented effectively. The tale is interactive, in the vein of Hervé Tullet's Press Here and Bill Cotter's Don't Push the Button!, but the interactions are shallow. For example, touching a button labeled "FISH" results in fish returning to a previously polluted ocean, but there is nothing valuable in the text that would allow children to practice the book's message in their own neighborhoods. This same level of oversimplification prevails throughout. The regions without access to clean water are places that are populated by people of color and are overseas, which implies that this is a problem found only in certain parts of the world, even though this is a global crisis that affects all races.