Raindrop

S TA R T S M A L L , T H I N K B I G

p a s r l k l l a i ng m s

Raindrop

by Mary Auld

with

a

T G I A No u t fo l d -

illustrations by Lou Baker Smith

S TA R T S M A L L , T H I N K B I G

p a s r l k l l a i ng m s

Raindrop

by Mary Auld

illustrations by Lou Baker Smith

consultant Dr. Nicholas Souter, Conservation International

I am a small sparkling raindrop—the first to fall from my cloud. I am made of water. Thousands of other raindrops will fall with me. Together, we are rain.

Water is a clear liquid. In small quantities, it forms a drop.

Rainwater is fresh and clean.

Raindrops form in clouds. When they get big and heavy enough, they fall to the ground.

Here is where I land on the earth.

My weight starts me rolling downward.

It is the start of my journey to the sea.

Animals drink some raindrops.

Some raindrops soak into the ground, helping plants to grow.

Some raindrops pool together to form puddles.

I join with other raindrops as I roll downhill. I get bigger and heavier.

Look! I have rolled into a stream.

I race down the mountainside, splashing around rocks and tumbling over waterfalls.

As water rolls downhill, it comes together into streams. The running water wears away (erodes) the land, creating gullies and rocky banks.

Some rocks wear away faster than others. The water flows around them.

Waterfalls form when the stream erodes softer rock back to a ridge of hard rock.

The water falls over it.

More streams join mine to make a river. It flows through a wet and steamy rainforest.

These mountains are in a tropical region. Lots of rain falls and it is hot.

Thick rainforest grows in this steamy habitat.

Animals like it here because there is plenty to eat and drink.

Plants grow quickly here. Mosses and ferns grow right on the edge of the water.

Here is the Mekong, one of Earth’s great rivers.

My smaller river runs into it. I mix with water drops from many other hills and mountains.

Along much of the Mekong, there are two seasons—one dry and one wet. The river floods after the heavy rains of the wet season.

My river is powerful. Its water carves out a valley and channels on its journey to the ocean.

A smaller river often flows into a larger river. It is called a tributary.

People build dams across powerful rivers. The fast-flowing water makes electricity by turning turbines inside the dam.

SOURCE

DAM

The point where two rivers meet is called a confluence.

TRIBUTARY CONFLUENCE

MEANDER OX BOW LAKE

LEVEE

FLOODPLAIN ESTUARY DELTA OCEAN

A river delta is named after delta, a letter from the Greek alphabet, written like this: Δ. On a map, the river’s channels form a delta shape.

This electricity is renewable energy.

It helps people, but dams can damage the river downstream.

Here is my river flowing slowly over a wide, flat valley.

It is huge now—over a half mile wide. It has great bends and even islands.

When a river reaches flatter ground, it slows down and spreads out.

The water carries lots of sandy silt. Where the river flows very slowly, the silt drops from the water.

Over time, this makes large bends and islands.

The river is full of life—and so are the banks alongside it.

Each little drop of water like me helps things live and grow, from plants to people!

Lots of different fish live in rivers.

The Mekong has more than 1,100 different types. The fish provide food for dolphins, turtles, birds, and humans.

All life is adapted to the way the river floods each year.

People live and farm by the rivers, using the water. Some villages grow into towns or cities.

Look at me now! I am one of billions of raindrops flowing through the Mekong Delta.

I am nearing the sea.

Crops grow well in the rich and fertile soil. Farmers grow rice in flooded paddy fields.

As some rivers reach the sea, they drop more silt and form more islands. The river branches out around these to form a delta.

Here is a floating market. The farmers of the Delta come here to sell their rice and other crops to the city people.

People grow so much rice in the Mekong Delta it is known as ”the rice bowl“ of Southeast Asia.

The Delta land often floods with the seasonal rains, so many homes are built on stilts to allow for this.

Climate change threatens delta areas. Rising sea levels could flood low-lying delta lands forever.

As I flow out into the sea, I become a drop of salty seawater. I will be carried far away by ocean currents.

Sea animals and plants are adapted to live in salty water.

Rivers are made from fresh rainwater, but salt from the land dissolves in this water as it flows. All this salt collects in the seas and oceans making them salty.

Changing water temperatures mean water in the oceans is always on the move. Warm water flowing into colder water pushes cold water into warmer water creating powerful currents of moving seawater.

I have traveled over 1,000 miles from where I fell in the Annamite Mountains to the South China Sea. The Mekong is the twelfth longest river in the world.

It starts in the Himalayas, the highest mountain range in the world.

Mekong River

d ina an as h C to imalay H the

Hanoi

EUROPE ASIA

AFRICA

LAOS Vientiane

An na

MYANMAR

mi te M ou

THAILAND

nt ai ns

Bangkok

The Mekong flows through six countries on its way to the sea, a journey of over 2,700 miles. In China it is called Lancang.

CAMBODIA Phnom Penh

VIETNAM Ho Chi Minh City

GULF OF THAILAND Some rivers from the rainforests of the Annamite Mountains run into the Mekong.

Here is the wind blowing across the sea.

Look at the sails of the boats full of air.

The blanket of air that surrounds Earth is called its atmosphere.

Changing temperatures cause air to move around Earth, just like water moves around the oceans.

Moving air makes the wind. It can be gentle or strong.

The sun shines down and I change again. This time I become water vapor. You cannot see me. I become part of the air.

Water moves around Earth in the air as well as in rivers and the sea. It changes, or evaporates, from a liquid to a gas called water vapor.

The way water moves and changes all the time helps make our weather.

Water can evaporate just about anywhere, but it happens faster when there is wind, warmth, and a big area of water (like the ocean).

I have changed again. Look inside this cloud.

I am an ice crystal now!

Cirrus high and wispy

Air has water vapor in it, but it also has tiny specks of dust.

4.349 miles

If air rises, as it does over mountains, it cools and the water freezes into ice around the dust particles. These ice crystals come together to form clouds.

Altostratus mid-level, thin blanket

1.243 miles

Some clouds form high up in the atmosphere, others lower down.

Cumulonimbus huge storm clouds

Cumulus low and fluffy

Stratocumulus low, flat, and fluffy

Cirrocumulus high and patterned

There are different types of cloud.

When the wind moves us around, we change shape and join together.

Ice crystals connect and get bigger, too.

If they get heavy enough, they fall to the ground as precipitation— the name we give to water that falls from clouds.

Altocumulus mid-level, broken, and fluffy

Stratus low and flat

Nimbostratus low, dark, and steady rain

I am about to fall, but will it be as rain, hail, sleet, or snow?

SNOW Ice crystals connect to form snowflakes.

If it is cold, they fall as snow.

RAIN When it is warmer, they melt as they fall to form rain.

SLEET Sleet falls when snowflakes melt close to the ground.

HAIL Falling rain may be blown back up high again. It freezes into balls of ice and falls to the ground as hail.

Here I am a fresh, sparkling raindrop again.

I am falling far away from where I fell before.

I bring life-giving water to another place on Earth.

Water may travel great distances through the atmosphere as vapor and in clouds.

Water that evaporates from the Pacific Ocean may eventually fall as rain over Africa.

This time I flow through a stream and a river into a reservoir. Here people store the fresh water they need to live.

A reservoir is a store of water. Sometimes, reservoirs form naturally as lakes or underground.

Sometimes people make them by building dams.

open

We also need fresh water to make our crops grow and to use in our factories.

Here I am in a glass of water. Someone will drink me, and I will pass through their body.

Before too long, I will be up in the clouds again.

Who knows where I will end up?

Your body uses water to work but passes what it doesn’t need as pee. This and other wastewater goes through pipes to places to be cleaned.

The clean fresh water goes back into the system to be used again or it goes back into rivers. open

I am a precious, sparkling drop of water.

I am part of the water cycle that carries on forever.

The water cycle is the name we give to the way water moves around Earth, in the atmosphere, on land, and in the oceans.

The water cycle cleans water naturally so it can be used again and again.

Next time you drink a glass of water think about me and all the little raindrops that fall from the sky and create mighty rivers. Water gives life to our Earth.

16in x16in fold-out S TA R T S M A L L . . .

ANIMAL I-SPY Find these animals somewhere in the book. Do they live in the river, the sea, or on land?

This is the journey that starts with a small, sparkling drop of water and becomes part of Earth’s water cycle. As long as there is water on Earth, its cycle will never stop. water vapor

Irrawaddy dolphin

water evaporates to become vapor (this can be from land or sea)

raindrops

become part of a stream

streams

raindrops

W

AT

ER

CL CY

a small river flows into a big one

sea

flying frog white-cheeked gibbon

green turtle

a river flows into the sea (or a lake)

join to become a river

slow loris

E

bar-headed goose pit viper

precipitation

TH

E

fall from a cloud

Mekong giant catfish

river

sometimes water falls as snow, sleet, or rain

clouds

water vapor high in the air condenses and freezes to form clouds

saola Brahminy kite dragonfly

smooth-coated otter

pangolin

raindrops

water particles get so big, they fall as small sparkling raindrops

going underground

some water sinks into the earth to form underground rivers or lakes

THE G

THINK BIG! BLUE PLANET

Almost three-quarters of Earth’s surface is covered with water. This makes it look blue from space. But most of this is seawater. Only a tiny bit of this (3 percent) is fresh water.

ANCIENT WATER

The water cycle means water is not lost, just moved somewhere else on Earth. This means the water we use can be over 4 billion years old, far older even than the dinosaurs.

hammerhead shark

REAT RIVERS OF THE WOR Arctic Ocean

painted storks and blackheaded ibis

LD

wagtail

Indo-Chinese tiger

Mackenzie

LOCKED UP WATER

Most fresh water is locked up in the ice caps at the Poles or deep under the ground. Only 0.3 percent of the fresh water is available for plants, humans, animals, and other living things to use.

WATER FOR LIFE

Life could not exist without water— it is found in all life-forms. Over half of the human body is water. Around half of a tree is water.

Yukon

Yenisei

NORTH AMERICA

Ob Rhine

Missouri Colorado

EUROPE

Mississippi

Atlantic Ocean

Danube

Nile

AFRICA Pacific Ocean

Orinoco

Niger

Amazon

Congo

Paraguay

Zambezi Paraná

SOUTH AMERICA

Atlantic Ocean

Southern Ocean

Here are many of Earth’s great rivers. The Nile River in Africa is the longest on Yangtze Ganges Pacific Ocean Earth at 4,132 miles long.

Mekong The Amazon River of South America is second at Indian Ocean AUSTRALIA 4,000 miles. The Mekong Darling comes twelfth, but is second Murray only to the Amazon in the number of different fish species (over 1,100) it gives a home to. It is an important habitat and needs protecting.

Amur

ASIA

Indus

Yellow

S TA R T S M A L L , THINK BIG

sparkling l l a m s

Raindrop

Unfold a world of discovery with this series that takes readers from the small and familiar to new areas of knowledge where you

This story starts with a small sparkling raindrop falling from a cloud.

It has fallen to Earth many times before in a never-ending cycle. Read about its journey from mountain stream to the Mekong River and out into the sea, before it takes to the air again.

This story ends with a giant fold-out.

really have to think big.

Also Available

Are you ready to think BIG? Small Sparkling Raindrop This edition published in 2025 by Red Comet Press, LLC, Brooklyn, NY First published in the UK in 2025 by Mama Makes Books • Text © 2025 Mary Auld Illustrations © 2025 Lou Baker Smith • Distributed in North America by ABRAMS, New York All rights reserved • Manufactured in China using FSC paper and eco-friendly inks Library of Congress Control Number 2024939787 ISBN (HB): 978-1-63655-143-2 23 24 25 26 27 / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

RedCometPress.com ISBN 978-1-63655-143-2

$15.99 US $19.99 CAN

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