Little Cloud's Big Dream - Ixtzel Arreola - ★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Ixtzel Arreola

ILLUSTRATOR: Martina Liebig

GENRE: Children's Picture Book.

PUBLICATION DATE: March 11, 2025

RATING: 3.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: A picture book that indirectly explains the water cycle using the story of a little cloud. Sweet story and great graphics. But I wish the intent had been made clearer on the front cover and the execution a bit fine-tuned.

This is a cute story about a little cloud called Re, who dreams of becoming a big cloud. She has no idea how to grow larger, until a friendly cloud tells her the secret: “Fly over lakes and rivers and collect morning dew.” Thus Re soaks up the water droplets, and grows bigger and bigger, and even makes a new friend along the way: a pretty pink flower. However, Re is too large to float around. What happens next?

This book was first published in 2024 in German under the title “Kleine Wolke Re.” This English translation is to be published in March 2024.

The concept of the story is fabulous. But the implementation of the concept was a slightly mixed experience for me.

Through the simple idea of a cloud’s desire to grow, the entire water cycle from condensation to evaporation is explained. The graphical change in the cloud’s size and shape provides a visual aid to understand the changes at every step of the process.

The content is presented in rhythmic prose, but the rhymes are not always consistent in pattern nor meter. I am not sure if this problem is a result of translation hurdles. While the story successfully avoids scary scientific words, it still has some big words such as ‘colossal’ and ‘contemplated’. These might be tough for the target readers of Grades P-to-2 to grasp easily.

The ending left me a tad dissatisfied. The final text shows the cloud in the form of a tiny raindrop landing near his Flower friend, happy to meet again and bidding each other goodnight. The next page shows the raindrop evaporating into water vapour. However, this final step is shown only in the graphics with no accompanying text. Clever, but might be a bit too subtle for kids to understand without adult guidance.

Also, a logical loophole I couldn’t figure out: If the story means to say that Re went from cloud to rain without losing her sense of self-identity or her memory of her friendship with Flower, then how come she doesn’t know/recollect (at the start of the book) that she needs to collect water to grow bigger? Wouldn’t she have been created from water vapour even before?

I wish there had been a water cycle diagram at the end of the book. This diagram would have been a helpful aid for superimposing the changes that Re the cloud went through onto the actual steps of the cycle.

Further, the front cover should have mentioned that this is a water cycle story. The back cover mentions this in the last sentence, but many readers might not read that part. Unless you know that this book conveys a helpful visual way of understanding the water cycle, you will pick it up only as a cute cloud story. There’s no direct mention of the water cycle or its stages anywhere in the inside textual content.

The illustrations are beautiful, as can be seen from the cover. Though a water cycle story, the sketches contain plenty of flora and fauna, making every page a visual treat. The warm earth-toned hues add to the natural feel.

All in all, I did like this story, but I feel it could have done even better with a few alterations.

Recommended to classrooms and for home-schooling. While this is a self-contained story, it will work better only with adult guidance.

My thanks to North South Books for providing the DRC of “Little Cloud's Big Dream” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.